Why Travel Matters

Where digital meets travel + lifestyle … A collection of can’t-miss news from this week, including spring travel trends. Sign up to get the TURNER Weekly Download in your inbox every Friday.

Gramping

You’ve heard of glamping. But have you heard of gramping? This growing travel trend sees grandparents leaving parents at home and taking grandkids on “skip-gen” vacations. It’s a win-win! Parents get a little time off and grandparents get to bond with their grandkids. It's going to be a slightly more active vacation, though. “Grandparents need to be willing to play basketball, ping pong or whatever to connect with the kids,” Jill Bondy told Boomer Magazine.

Travel Like Greta (By Train)

Grandparents (and everyone else) should travel sustainably, so that the earth is in good shape for the younger generation. One shining example is Swedish climate change activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Greta Thunberg – who happens to be all of 16 years old. Lonely Planet has the scoop on how Greta travels by rail, which is a sustainable alternative to air travel. It’s catching on – in Sweden at least. A movement called "flygskam" or "flight shame" refers to the environmental guilt travelers have over flying.

Solo #YOLO

Like sustainable travel, solo travel trend is hot in 2019. Travel Leaders Group reports that 36 percent of travelers are planning a solo trip this year. And a majority of those travelers are women. "[They may have] friends who have started families and are unable to accompany them," said Andrea Ross, the managing director of tour operator Wild Frontiers. "They may have a significant other who isn’t interested in traveling to an adventurous destination, or just doesn’t want to travel, so rather than stay at home, they’re taking the plunge and traveling solo."

Why Travel Matters

No matter what type of trip you’re planning this year, we can all agree that travel matters.  Just ask former president Barack Obama, who spoke last month at the World Travel & Tourism Council global summit in Seville, Spain. “One of the benefits of the travel industry, obviously, is to remind people both of the incredible value of our diversity of this planet and the differences we have,” he said. “But travel also reminds us of what we share and what we have become – the ability for us to recognize ourselves in each other, so that if you’re wandering through some small village in Kenya and you see a mother and a child playing and laughing, that’s not different from the mother and child back in Virginia or in Hawaii.”

Weekly Moment of Zen

Happy Mother’s Day! Here are nine Mother’s Day gifts inspired by a few favorite movie moms.