Tuesday, September 11, 2018

TRAVEL SENIOR SPECIAL.... Mature Market


 Mature Market

Once ignored, a range of products and services are looking to tap into the senior citizen market

When her husband retired from his job as general manager at BPCL, Regie Thomas followed suit by taking voluntary retirement from hers, as a trainer at a travel company. The reason? So that she, too, could devote time to the pleasurable pursuit of travelling. “It wouldn’t have been fair to my students otherwise,” says Thomas, now 59. So far, the Kochi-based couple have travelled to most parts of India, including driving all the way to Gujarat over a month, and holidayed abroad, too. Just this year, they spent a seven-week holiday in the US, travelling from the West Coast to the East. Far from being bored, retirement for the couple has come to mean more time to pursue their shared passion of globetrotting.
The Thomases might prefer to do their travel independently but the category of senior citizen holidays is one that companies are enthusiastic about. According to a 2013 report by market research firm Frost & Sullivan, the number of senior citizen travellers is expected to grow seven-fold to 7.3 million by 2030. Travel company Thomas Cook considers this one of the fastestgrowing segments in the market, accounting for 35% of its overall leisure business. “The combination of early retirement, high disposable income (often topped up by their children) and a healthy lifestyle have given room for more leisure time, creating demand for travel and our internal data indicates an approximate 18-20% year-onyear growth,” says Rajeev Kale, president and country head, holidays, at Thomas Cook.
Travel is not the only category seeing growth among the 60+ age group in India. Rahul Gupta launched his startup, Senior World, with the intention of catering to an age group that he felt was being left out. The push came from senior citizens in his own family, including his parents, who are in their 80s. “These elders could be highly educated but still be scared of using technology,” says Gupta.
With that in mind, the startup has launched a variety of mobile phones (while some of them double as a quasi hearing aid, others are hearing-aid compatible), group travel packages and motion sensor lights, among others. Though he declined to reveal profits and margins, Gupta says the bootstrapped startup has been seeing 100% growth in revenue, year-on-year. Apart from Gupta’s startup, there is Senior Shelf, which offers products and services for the elderly, serial entrepreneur Meena Ganesh’s Portea, which offers elder care among its portfolio of services, and Nightingales Home Services, also in the home healthcare business. The 350 crore adult diaper market, too, is forecast to “grow significantly due to increasing healthcare standards in the country”, according to consultancy Bonafide Research in its report “India Diapers Market 2021”. In real estate, consultancy JLL estimates in a report that the demand for formal senior living facilities would be 312,000 units.
With those aged 60 and above, numbering 104 million in the 2011 Census, estimated to make up 20% of the country’s population by 2050, it is no wonder that the market is sitting up to take notice of a hitherto ignored segment. But as Senior World’s Gupta says, creating awareness remains a challenge. “There are unique needs that are not being looked at. But one needs to be patient.”
indulekha.aravind@timesgroup.com


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