Babymooners or just expecting parents on holiday?

As of March 2016, 8.3% of Australians 14+ were planning to take a holiday in the next four weeks, 15.7% were planning to take one in the next one-to-two months, 11.6% in the next two-three months, and 19.0% in the next three-to-five months. For each of these time frames, expecting parents come in below average, as the chart below indicates.  

Source: Roy Morgan Single Source (Australia), April 2015-March 2016, n=15,074. Base: Australians 14+

To put it another way: 54.7% of the general population intend to take their next holiday within the next five months, with an average planned trip length of 6 nights; in contrast to the 42.0% of expecting parents who are planning their next trip within this time, with an average planned holiday length of three nights.

On the other hand, an above-average proportion of expecting parents have holidays planned for the longer term: just over a quarter of them in the next 6-12 months (compared with a national average of 17.4%), 12.1% in the next one-to-two years (compared with 5.1%), 3.5% in the next two-three years (compared with 1.7%), and 3.3% for some time after that (compared with 1.3%).  Tellingly, this supports our recent findings about the elevated incidence of parents travelling with infants.

Norman Morris, Industry Communications Director, Roy Morgan Research, says:

“While expecting parents are markedly less likely than the average Australian to be planning a trip in the next five months, the fact remains that more than four of every 10 are intending to go away at some point within this time frame. Although the data doesn’t tell us whether they all consider their planned trip to be a babymoon, it certainly suggests that taking one last carefree break before having a baby is not rare.

“When we compare the holiday attitudes of expecting parents to the average Australian, we find that the former are almost 40% more likely than the latter to agree that ‘I like to go away on weekends’ and 40% more likely to ‘enjoy holidays where everything is organised for you.’ Indeed, enterprising hotels and resorts are already targeting this niche group with ‘babymoon’ packages designed to cater to these particular preferences.

“However, with the help of Roy Morgan’s Holiday Tracker, businesses wishing to attract expecting parents on holiday can gain an even deeper understanding of this very specific sector of the travel market, based on comprehensive demographic, attitudinal and behavioural data. Armed with such insights, they can then tailor their marketing so it resonates with exactly the right audience.”