Why millennials like me are embracing holidays with parents
It’s the travel industry's equivalent of an 18-hour Saturday Netflix binge in Primark pyjamas fuelled by sweet-and-salty popcorn and a microwave curry. Holidaying with the parents is now the ultimate budget escape from the pressures of life. And millennials like me are embracing it.
I’m 29, single and battered by the city grind. I resent the daily train scrums, the dog-eat-dog dating, and the meticulously-curated "perfect" lives plastered on my Instagram feed. Recently it came to a head. I was burnt out and bawling after it emerged that Mr Right was swiping right behind my back.
A friend suggested vodka and Toblerone. But, as a travel writer, surely a proper holiday was a better remedy. But where to go? And who to invite?
I asked my friends. They were all broke or saving for a deposit on a flat. I considered going away by myself. But in truth I needed company. I also knew another person who was equally in need of escape abroad. Someone who would jump at the chance and enjoy my company. And, frankly, someone who would also pay for the rental car and more besides (a compelling factor when you’ve spent a good third of your working life in overdraft).
Yep, that someone was Mum.
She rapturously agreed to my suggestion of a two-week holiday in South Africa and I panicked. Mum and I hadn’t been abroad together since I left school. Dad – a workaholic who never takes a holiday – was staying at home. What on earth would we talk about during all that time alone?
The start was shaky. There was a depressing episode when we checked into a beach resort and the barman asked me how long I’d been with my girlfriend for. Maybe it’s because she’s white and I’m mixed race. Henceforth I loudly called her "mother" in public.
I felt the age gap at meal times when feeding my camera phone before myself. Mum's look of doctorly concern was redolent of when, aged seven, I'd insist on giving my toy dog a seat at restaurants. Her addiction to 24-hour news as background noise was also posing difficulties for my bedroom chill-out time.
Something has shifted. Bridget Jones went to Thailand with her mate Shazza – not her parents – when life got a bit crap. But now holidays with parents are on the rise: almost one in five Britons have been on a multi-generational holiday in the last year. Why? It’s partly because millennials are skint. One in four young adults (aged 20-34) live with their folks, prompting the term "Generation Boomerang". We will earn ￡8,000 less during our 20s than our predecessors.
Yet research shows that we have a greater hunger than Baby Boomers to see the world. And, according to a one survey, we are also turned off at the thought of slumming it – if our hotel isn’t near public transport, it’s a deal breaker. Luxury amenities like spas are on our wishlist too.
The obvious solution for middle class millennials? Mini breaks with friends and subsidised lengthier holidays with the parents.
It's clearly catching on. An, admittedly US-focused, Preferred Hotels & Resorts survey found that 91 per cent of millennials take a multigenerational trip every year. Anecdotally, all of my friends are doing it. One travelled around Thailand with her dad this summer. Another holidayed in Majorca with her parents for a fortnight. What was once unthinkable has now become a financial necessity.
If like me you're lucky enough to have parents with disposable income for holidays and a desire to spoil you at any opportunity, the benefits are hard to ignore. Letting your parent buy all the holiday cocktails when you're pushing 30 shouldn't be so socially acceptable, but it is.
But it’s also about companionship. Living in the glare of social media, I increasingly feel my family is the final refuge where I can flaunt my true, boring, farting, self-pitying self.
This is probably the part where I’d talk about how I became closer to my mum in South Africa, confiding in her about 'Tinder-addict-Tim' over sundowner cocktails overlooking a hippo-infested lake. But the lady isn’t for talking when it comes to emotional stuff. That said, Mum put up with my spiky silences, and dangled the kind of conversations she knows I like under my nose – like a nanny using a lolly pop to bribe a three-year-old.
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We talked about work-life-balance and our travel bucket lists as we walked the empty, wild coastlines of KwaZulu-Natal until the sky purpled and the sun collapsed somewhere behind the milkwood trees, and we realised it was night. During star-lit barbecue dinners, we chewed the fat over the sort of topics I relish, from the polemical (Donald Trump) to the peculiar (Twin Peaks ending theories).
I spent more quality time with her than I had in years. We snorkelled in pristine, remote beaches. We went on a dolphin boat tour out of season, didn’t spot a single one (obviously), and were in giggling fits afterwards. Mum’s glee when an elephant almost tipped our 4x4 on a sunset safari revealed a taste for risk I’d never seen (though it shouldn’t have surprised me really; she's a devoted Brexiteer).
We’ve since done a Rome city break and trekked Hadrian’s Wall. I appreciate the quality time in a way my siblings don’t (middle child syndrome). And there are further advantages when you get home. I’m not dreading that Mum will tag me in poolside photos where I forgot to suck my stomach in. Instead, she makes a leather-bound album, which we pour over with tea and biscuits. That’s 1-0 to real life Facebook methinks. And, yes, also a modest win for my bank balance.