Between couch and cruise there are a million holidays waiting for you

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday July 30, 2015

In the depth of winter there's no better recreation than planning the summer holiday. As the chilly wind blows outside, a sunny stack of brochures, magazine articles and maps create a certain glow.

The hotel and travel trade are well aware of the season and now is the time for a deluge of advertising for cruises, sandy beaches, German river tours or Asian adventures. The world's travel and hospitality industry is a trillion-dollar business where competition is intense.

As a rough split, you get the Baby Boomers - well heeled with mortgages paid, nests empty, and either well-paying senior jobs or fat super income. They're the ones who fill those massive floating palaces that sail the Mediterranean - and have dwarfed Station Pier in Port Melbourne.

Mums and dads with kids are a lower price category. I can still remember when colleagues of mine would pack the tribe off to Rosebud for the summer, and drive down to join in at the weekends. Do they still do that? These days they are more likely to buy a packaged fortnight in Bali or Vietnam.

But the group that has most recently attracted attention from the travel world is the millennials. Born in the 80s and 90s, they are now financially into their stride. Like the boomers, they make good money and have no kids or mortgages (surprising how many still live with mum and dad). One thing they love is to spend and have fun. Exactly what the travel industry exists for.

So take a look at hotels and you will see a lot of them working on their decor. Making them trendier, putting in contemporary restaurants, opening their bars late-night with powerful loudspeakers; they're extending gym facilities and even giving yoga classes.

These tech-savvy guests naturally expect free wi-fi, but also use apps on their smartphones to check-in, open doors, order room service and concierge bookings. They scour Facebook, Instagram, and the social media for opinions and reviews. Consequently, all the big hotels and chains have their own media specialists making sure that opinions stay nice.

The millennials have now started to overtake the baby boomers in numbers world-wide. Here in Australia Morgans counted their numbers at 26 versus 23 per cent. And of course the millennials are on a growth curve, while the boomers are beginning to shuffle off the page.

You get cheaper holidays at the younger end of the scale. Airbnb is only seven years old yet it has more than 1,000,000 listings in 34,000 cities and 190 countries. Current evaluation is $20 billion. Not bad for a business started in 2008 with three air mattresses in Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia's San Francisco apartment. Airbnb can cost from $80 a night.

But what about a holiday where the accommodation is free? Another post-millennium phenomenon, Couchsurfing International was formed in 2003. Ten years later it numbered 5.5 million registered members and you can suppose that growth has been exponential since then.

Here you (often literally) sleep on the host's couch, enjoying their friendship and hospitality - and hopefully making them delighted with their new friend from Australia. In my twenties I surfed many couches as I travelled India and south-east Asia, making some wonderful friends and discovering life in a foreign world from the inside. It was one of life's founding experiences - yes, I'd recommend it.