Jane E. Fraser

Grown up gappers hit the road June 10, 2010

If you ever look back and wish you’d taken a year out to go travelling, it might be time to turn regret into action.

School leavers and university students no longer own the concept of taking a gap year, with ‘grown up gappers’ hitting the road in droves. The ‘career break’ is now considered the fastest growing type of gap year (although not the largest in number terms) and is joined by the pre-wedding gap, post-wedding gap, pre-baby gap, divorce gap and plenty of other catalysts for taking an extended trip. For some it is a first go at a gap year, while for others it is a second or third in what may be a lifetime habit.

Tom Griffiths, founder of Gapyear.com, a website dedicated to gap year travel, says life has become “a series of gaps”. Griffiths has identified a range of reasons why people take later gap years, including job dissatisfaction and wanting a change of direction. A common one is the ‘quarter life crisis’, particularly among career women about to turn 30. Another is being cash rich, especially for SINKs (single income, no kids) and DINKs (double income, no kids).

Griffiths says the trend towards later gap years has been accelerated by the economic downturn, with redundancy payouts used to fund travel. “Many are taking the opportunity to cash in their redundancy, sell their car, get the deposit back from their flat… and then head off,” he says.

Carl Cross, the Australian brand manager for Student Flights, says he has seen a lot of redundancy-prompted travel over the past two years, although not everyone takes a full year. Cross says career breaks and other gaps taken by people in their 30s and 40s have grown to such an extent that Student Flights is this week launching a partnership with a UK-based company specialising in gap year travel, to bring it to the Australian market in a more organised way. “We’ve had it there (later gap year travel) in the background for a while and we haven’t really done anything with it, but it has been growing of its own volition,” he says. Cross says products will be marketed under the concept of ‘gap years for grown ups’, using the experience of the more mature UK market but tailored for the Australian market.

Natalie Placko, director of marketing for STA Travel, also has her sights on a more organised market for later gap years. She is yet to settle on a name for this fast-growing segment, but has been working with ‘before life gets too serious’.

Placko says the older gap year market is very different to the traditional market of young travellers setting off with an airfare, a backpack and not much else. Older gappers tend to have a lot more money to spend and are less likely to take a full year, so they are trying to fit a lot more into their time. They might include adventure activities, organised tours, a volunteering stint, a language course and even a five-star beach break. “They’re really adding substance and experiences,” says Placko. “They want to achieve things in their gap year, whereas once it was just taking some time off, ‘it’s all about me’.”

Silke Kerwick, spokeswoman for YHA Ltd, says the trend towards grown up gappers has prompted the development of hostels with en-suite bathrooms, to cater for this ‘more discerning’ market. Kerwick says many older gappers are travelling as couples, having a “last hurrah” before they take on mortgages and have children.

Tom Griffiths says employers are also starting to see the value of gap years, in terms of staff retention. Some companies around the world are even starting to use career gaps to deal with staffing problems caused by economic fluctuations. “It’s cheaper to send those you want to keep but can’t afford just now off on a sabbatical overseas, especially somewhere cheap like Africa, than to pay redundancy and then face the recruitment and re-training cost of new staff,” he says.

Can you afford it?

Carl Cross from Student Flights says many gap year travellers use a volunteering stint as a way of stretching out their travel budget. While volunteers need to self-fund their travel, on longer projects they can earn enough to live on while there, so that component of their trip is cost neutral.

Cross says older gap travellers tend to self-fund their trips rather than take working holidays, partly due to restrictions on working visas. “After 31, you’re very limited in where you can go and work, you’re limited to a holiday visa,” he says.

Gapyear.com’s Tom Griffith says volunteering keeps costs down, as does choice of destination; it is possible to live on as little as $10 a day in parts of Asia “if you try very hard”.

This article first appeared in Jane E. Fraser’s weekly travel column in The Sun Herald, Sydney