Travel Motivations of Seniors: A Review and a Meta-Analytical Assessment

Over the past decades, leisure travel has become increasingly popular in older segments of the world population, as a consequence of global factors such as a rise in life expectancy, improved health conditions, a higher disposable income, and increased availability of discretionary time in retirement age. Consequently, researchers have become more interested in studying the motivations for travel of seniors. A number of questions may be raised or have been addressed in the recent past: What are the main factors explaining the travelling choices of seniors? Are their travel motivations different from the ones of the younger population, which have been widely studied in the past? Are geographical differences in terms of motivations comparable between different age groups? Why is senior tourism a topic of particular interest with regard to Asia? In order to answer such questions, in this paper we provide a review of the literature on the travel motivations of seniors. On the basis of 29 articles published between 1988 and 2015 on the topic, we provide a qualitative and meta-analytic assessment of past findings, by investigating the dimensions of travel motivations most frequently employed in past seniors surveys. Finally, we discuss a research agenda for further analysis of senior travel motivations and for the integration of this branch of travel research within the wider framework of senior tourism analysis and management.