Are You a HENRY or a YAHTZEE (or Both)?

The travel industry — like hundreds of other industries and businesses — is chock full of its own jargon, acronyms and labels.

Now, with the release of MMGY’s 2016 Portrait of the American Traveler (POAT), we have a new list of acronyms and labels, and just in time to give us a break from talking about “Millennials,” “Gen Xers,” “Baby Boomers” and “Matures.”

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Actually I doubt we’re going to be able to stop referring to those generational labels — they’re now firmly entrenched in the marketing field’s lexicon and they’ve no doubt proved to be very useful — although MMGY maintains that the days of characterizing travelers by these broad generational segments are on the way out.

But maybe we can now mix it up with MMGY’s new contributions, what it is calling “micro-segments.” To come up with these, the firm says it took a deeper dive into its  data in order to better understand consumer behaviors within the Millennial, Gen X and Baby Boomer generations. (It does not include Matures.)

Its “micro-segments” include:

• HENRYs—“High Earner, Not Rich Yet” travelers who are  luxury consumers with a high, steady cash flow. They are ready to spend for quality and service.

• GottaGoSOLOs—A traveler who is married with children but vacations alone to recapture some of his or her independence.

• YAHTZEEs—“Young At Heart Travelers Zooming Everywhere Enthusiastically” who are active retirees traveling more and spending more. They are, however, slow to join the sharing economy.

• Jet Sweaters—Adult amateur athletes without kids who are redefining wellness travel.

(All of these, with the exception of the HENRYs, were coined by MMGY Global).

MMGY’s POAT  study — with its extensive statistics, insights and conclusions — is an invaluable addition to travel research. And this new mix of labels and acronyms is a creative and frankly, fun, way of analyzing the traveling consumer.

But does it all represent market research on steroids or a new and valuable contribution to the conversation? It may just be both.

I think it’s important to remember that there are Millennials who travel like Boomers and Boomers who travel like Millennials; that it’s likely there are HENRYs who are not ready to spend on “quality and service,” and that there are YAHTZEEs who are into staying at home. (And POAT stats also make it clear that HENRYs and YAHTZEEs, like the other micro-segments, don’t all behave exactly according to their descriptions.)

People are people — and that means they are sometimes quixotic, often erratic and always complex. And that’s a good thing for all of us — including marketers.

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