The Leisure Upgrade
Optimisation and control have made their way into the world of leisure beyond the planning stage and into leisure pursuits themselves.
Consumers are beginning to imbue their freetime with constructive activities and meaning – both to upgrade the leisure activity itself, as well as the person undertaking it.
The travel industry will be strongly affected by the consumer need for self-improvement and further life fulfilment.
Global Top 10 Extremely Valued Entertainment Activities
- Just relaxing
- Reading for Pleasure
- Socializing face to face
- Traveling to countries I have never been to before
- Keeping up with news and current affairs
- Participating in sport or going to the gym
- Learning a new skill/activity
- Socializing/chatting with friends and family using instant messaging
- Entertaining at home/cooking (not everyday cooking)
- Watching TV
- Just relaxing
- Traveling to countries I have never been to before
- Reading for pleasure
- Socializing face to face
- Keeping up with news and current affairs
- Learning a new skill/activity
- Socializing/chatting with friends and family using instant messaging
- Participating in sport or going to the gym
- Entertaining at home/cooking (not everyday cooking)
- Making art/photography/crafts/music
Source: nVision Research | Base: All smartphone owners among 1000-5000 online respondents per country aged 16-64 (Indonesia & S. Africa 16-54), 2014 February
Cult of Creativity?
Travellers’ attitudes towards creativity are becoming increasingly positive with the democratisation of art-based leisure pursuits such as photography.
Value of Making Art/Photography/Crafts/Music for the Overall Entertainment
Source: nVision Research | Base: 1000-5000 online respondents per country aged 16-64 (Indonesia & S. Africa 16-54), 2015 February
Highly valuable
Not so valuable
Creative hobbies are popular worldwide. Very few have never pursued this as entertainment. Their value is felt particularly strongly in Brazil and China in comparison to Canada, the USA and Europe. This may speak to how creative pursuits are quickly becoming high- social currency activities in markets that are seeing significant middle class expansion.
The constant photo-op-seeking from tourists around the world is not just context dependent – it is truly a hobby of its own right.
Travel photography is evolving. It’s certainly true that part of the evolving travel photography comes from the ongoing need to document our lives. Barrier to entering the world of photography rather than documentation has gotten extremely low.
People Who Take Photos on Their Smartphones at Least Once a Week
Source: nVision Research | Base: 1000-5000 online respondents per country aged 16-64 (Indonesia & S. Africa 16-54), 2015 February
Millenials
Gen X
Baby-boomers
Looking at the demographic differences, there is a significant tail-off in the older generation, which demomstrate lower interest in this activity. The results are in accordance with smartphone ownership as well as natural differences in habit. Significantly, however, the proportion of millennials who take photos with a smartphone is largely consistent between markets.
Liquid Skills
Being in a foreign country presents an opportunity for novelty- being able to learn something that could not be learned anywhere else!
The out-of-home leisure industry has been dominated by consumer enthusiasm for the leisure lesson for some time – from cookery classes to hot yoga, rock-climbing and beyond. This exploding industry appeals to huge number of consumers by having the same answer to disparate motivations: true love of learning, the need for new experiences, budding health concerns, pressure in the workforce to upskill, or even wanting to have more interesting hobbies to show off online.
“Learning a New Skill/Activity” is an Extremely Highly-Valued Pursuit as Entertainment across the World
Source: nVision Research | Base: 1000-5000 online respondents per country aged 16-64 (Indonesia & S. Africa 16-54), 2015 February
Never does this
Not at all valuable
Not so valuable
Valuable
Extremely valuable
Skills acquisition is valued highly across the world as entertainment – but nowhere more so than China, where there is a longstanding culture that prioritises learning as self-development across socio-economic class and age groups.
World Wide Wellness
Between rises in both prevalence of desk jobs and volume of processed foods worldwide, by the early 2000s, the consumer population had never felt more anti-athletic.
Consumer attitudes towards health are nearly universal: health is one of the primary targets for self-improvement and personal development.
Self-improvement and healthy living have blended together into concepts of meaningful or purposeful travel in the form of medical tourism, escapist retreats, and similar.
What Do People Say about the Importance of Being Physically Fit and Active Today?
Source: nVision Research | Base: 1000-5000 online respondents per country aged 16-64 (Indonesia & S. Africa 16-54), 2015 February
Not at all important
Not important
Neither important nor unimportant
Important
Very important
The mass affluent consumer today has unprecedented levels of aspiration towards being athletic. Approximately 21% of the population would be very open to holiday options that emphasize fitness.