Women’s travel stats and contest

Photo from Venere.com

There are some really interesting travel statistics about women.

For example, MaryBeth Bond, the “Gutsy Traveler” and so-called #1 expert on women’s travel in the USA, noted on her website that 80% of travel decisions are made by women, regardless of who’s traveling, where they’re going, and who’s paying.

“Hard” adventure travelers (of whom there are 6.1 million) — those thrill-seekers looking for sky-diving, hang-gliding, and parasailing — are usually young college-aged men, while “soft” adventure travelers (all 67 million of them) — interested in horseback-riding, camping, hiking, and off-roading — are overwhelmingly senior women.

Women travel more often for leisure than for business or work, and if they do travel for work, they’ll do it earlier in their lives.

Women’s-specific products earned $875 million for their producers in 2004, and the products are constantly increasing in number and becoming more available.

The older the women, the more likely they are to plan their souvenir purchases while traveling — younger female travelers tend to buy more spontaneously, potentially regretting it later.

And finally, for any female travelers who’d like to make some statistics of their own, GoGirl (a company that makes female urination devices — talk about women’s-specific marketing) and Women Travel Blog are having a travel writing competition; you could win your own personal urination funnel, or a $30 cheque as a guest writer for the blog.  It’s not much, but it might be fun! At the very least, it’ll be easier to pee standing up.