Ageless Tourism Recognition Questionnaire
Welcome Message and Invitation to Mentoring Support
Welcome! You are about to embark on a journey to elevate your ability to attract, serve, and retain mature travelers. Let’s get started with some definitions to guide you through this process:
- Attract: This refers to better tailoring your messages, advertisements, social media posts, website content, emails, images, and branding to capture the business of both leisure and business travelers of all ages, especially the more experienced and older travelers.
- Serve: This refers to enhancing how you train your staff to treat mature guests appropriately and how you design and build the physical environment you offer to accommodate all guests, especially those who are mature.
- Retain: This refers to enjoying repeat business and better reviews on TripAdvisor, Booking.com, and others. Your mature guests will become advocates for your business through their positive word-of-mouth and online ratings.
- Mature Traveler/Guest: This refers to leisure or business travelers who are experienced, seasoned travelers. They appreciate luxury amenities, manageable itinerary pace, and built environments that accommodate their needs without singling them out or causing embarrassment. Our focus is primarily on Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) and older adults born before 1946. Still, ageless tourism resonates with anyone with this mindset, including multigenerational and skip-generation travelers (grandparents and grandchildren traveling together).
Purpose of the Questionnaire
This Questionnaire aims to transform and propel your company into an awareness of how they attract, serve, and retain mature travelers, which will lead to positive improvement and increased business. Completing the Questionnaire is the first step towards becoming Recognized as an ageless tourism company.
Transformation vs. Learning
- Learning is an ongoing process, and we will keep you updated on the latest in mature guest tourism through webinars, articles, and shared experiences.
- Transformation happens instantly. Enrolling in the Ageless Tourism Recognition program initiates this transformation by making you more aware of the mature market in tourism, their needs, and how your organization can meet those needs.
Action Plan and Mentoring
Addressing all the questions posed by this questionnaire will lead to an action plan, helping you capitalize on your strengths and address any weaknesses. Completing and submitting the Questionnaire begins your transformation into an Ageless Tourism Recognized organization.
What Topics Does The Questionnaire Cover?
The Questionnaire raises awareness about issues of tourism and aging, including ageism, accessibility, food service, images and branding, inclusiveness, health-related tourism, understanding human aging, and much more. You will discover and learn about the ten areas where hospitality, tourism, and human aging intersect, so these areas become part of your action plan, as you through this questionnaire.
Detailed Answers Encouraged
The Questionnaire asks dozens of relevant questions about your company and your practices. There are no trick questions and no wrong answers. However, we ask that you do not merely answer “yes” or “no.”
- Provide Full Stories: The more detailed and in-depth your answers, the better we can help you achieve your goals. There are no word limits, so feel free to elaborate.
- Addressing Each Question: If you have no experience with a question, please say so and ask us to note that in our upcoming private meeting. We will provide you with assistance.
Example:
One question asks: Are team members educated about the sensory needs of the mature guest regarding taste, smell, hearing, touch, and sight?
- Instead of answering “yes,” explain exactly how you know they are educated and whether you provided the training.
- If the answer is “I don’t know,” consider organizing a focus group or a survey to determine your staff’s level of knowledge.
- If the answer is “no,” ask us for further information on training your staff so that you can confidently change your answer to “yes” in the future.
Who Should Answer the Questions?
The Questionnaire should be answered by anyone in your company who can contribute to the answers and be part of the transformation. You may include vendors who impact your business. However, Recognition will only be granted to your company. If you wish to involve partners, collaborators, or other associated businesses, share this Questionnaire with them and encourage them to enroll separately.
How to Start Answering the Questionnaire?
Please read the entire Questionnaire before you begin to answer or give it to anyone on your team to contribute their answers. After your first read, you will have additional questions. We have answered most of those questions in a section following the Questionnaire. You better understand the need and purpose of the answers to your questions until you have first read the Questionnaire before you begin your answers. We have tried to cover all questions and clear up any confusion before you begin to answer the questions. However, if there remain open questions or confusion, please do not hesitate to email Adriane Berg at [email protected].
What to Do Once the Answers Are Complete
Once you have completed the Questionnaire, please send it to us at [email protected]. We will schedule a private Zoom meeting (or an in-person meeting in select cases) with you and any relevant team members. During this meeting, we will create an action plan to help you implement protocols and best practices to attract, serve, and retain mature travelers. You will receive your badge, promotional materials, and additional promotion from The World Tourism Network and The Ageless Traveler.
How You Will Be Recognized
There are a variety of ways we have designed to recognize you and we continue to add to these:
Press Release in eTurbo News and World Travel Network reaching the tourism industry, recognition on Ageless Traveler LinkedIn and Facebook reaching traveling consumers, mentions in speaking engagements and conferences that we attend worldwide. We are campaigning that Trip Advisor, and many more consumer platforms give you special recognition. Your badge and status can be promoted by your company in any way you see fit and we will repost or in other ways send your efforts to others.
How Does Recognition Make My Company a Leader in Ageless Tourism?
Receiving Ageless Tourism Recognition Connects You With Leaders In The Field And Other Companies That Have Contemplated Age-Related Tourism, Fostering Leadership And Innovation In The Industry.
Here are the top ways Recognition propels you to leadership:
Recognized businesses are invited to participate in the World Tourism Networks special interest group meetings with other leaders whose business method includes an elevated level of awareness regarding the mature market and the ability to brainstorm, network, and share with each other.
Recognized businesses enjoy promotion through press releases and are seen by the media and press as leaders. They are more likely to be interviewed for related articles, podcasts, or other content focused on their leadership. The World Tourism Network, in conjunction with The Ageless Traveler, offers awards at well-attended conferences for excellence in any of the ten areas related to ageless tourism.
Recognized businesses generate their own content for social media postings and become more influential, and often, their team members become influencers in hospitality, leisure, and business tourism.
Recognized businesses are more likely to receive laudatory reviews, particularly from the more experienced mature travelers on review websites like TripAdvisor, Yelp, and many others.
Recognize businesses have the opportunity to create and envision strategic alliances with companies that are often larger and more international than their own, thus having a place at the table in tourism and hospitality that was previously unavailable to them.
By no means are these the only ways that Ageless Tourism Recognition offers an elevated leadership position. As you will see when you complete the Questionnaire and have your private mentoring and the action plan meeting, there is an opportunity to alloy with advocacy organizations in both tourism and aging and increase your visibility by publicly taking a stand against ageism and in favor of best practices for the mature traveler.
What if My Answers Are Not Perfect? Will I Still Get Recognition?
The Questionnaire is not about providing perfect, “right” or “correct” answers but about Thoughtfulness, Awareness, and Transparency. Recognition comes from the willingness to journey towards best practices in tourism across the age continuum. An ongoing process makes your company a leader among mature tourists and a catalyst for them to choose your company over others.
Frequently Asked Questions About Answering The Questionnaire
Some questions seem redundant and appear in more than one category. Why is that?
Our purpose is to capture answers as they most relate to your organization. That means we are responsible for posing questions in various ways to stimulate your thinking. For example, we ask in a variety of places about whether you have provided a safe, easy-to-navigate physical experience for mature travelers. However, that question is posed differently for those in the hotel business compared to tour operators who do not have control over hotels but must evaluate whether the venues they select best accommodate and serve mature travelers. Because the design issue comes up in diverse ways for different companies, design-related questions are repeated under different areas of interest and in assorted styles. If you feel that you have already answered the question, direct us to your answer. However, respondents usually find something they would like to add, stimulated by the unique way the question has been posed.
What if a question does not relate to my business?
Several areas may not resonate with you. For example, there is an entire section on itinerary building, which might not be helpful or relevant if you are a transportation company, a spa, or a medical tourism destination. If that is the case, you have two choices. You can say that the question is not applicable, or you can reword it and answer it in a way that makes sense for your business, which will shed light and increase awareness regarding that issue.
How should I answer questions which currently would be answered with a “no”, but I plan to take future action that will change the answer?
An example of this might be in all the questions about staff training. Your staff may not be aware of ageless tourism, yet you plan to educate them and transform their attitudes on aging and how they serve mature guests. If that is the case, please answer the question exactly that way. Let us know that while you are not engaged in a positive way, your plan is to learn more and work with us to support you in having a positive answer to that question the next time around.
Submission Options
You can submit your answers online or in writing:
- Online Submission: Click on the 10 Interest Area and submit each form. Complete and submit the Questionnaire online.
- Email Submission: Create a Word document or PDF and email it to us at [email protected]
Multiple members of your organization and external contributors are welcome to help answer the questions, but only one response should be submitted.
Instructions for Submission:
Answer these questions about the 10 Special Interest Areas
- Design and Sensory Accommodation
- Staff Training and Age Awareness
- Marketing and Outreach
- Artificial Intelligence, Technology, and Data
- Ageism and Attitudes
- Employment Practices
- Itinerary Building and Sustainability
- Inclusivity: LGBTQ+, Travelers of Color, Religious Inclusion
- Advocacy
- Ageless Tourism Recognition
Thank you for taking this crucial step towards transforming your organization and becoming a recognized leader in ageless tourism!