Millennials are more likely than any other generation to choose a vacation destination based on the social media status it promises, while Gen Z actively steers away from mainstream spots and Baby Boomers are the least moved by the social-status appeal of travel posts. Those are the headline findings of a new University of Georgia study published in the journal Current Issues in Tourism and publicized this week.
What the research measured
The publication includes three separate studies. Across all three, the research team surveyed more than 2,000 participants across four age groups: Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z.
The study was led by B. Bynum Boley, professor of parks, recreation and tourism management at UGA and director of the UGA Tourism Research Lab, and is published in Current Issues in Tourism with co-author Zachary A. Russell. Boley is based at UGA’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, as is co-author Sabrina Rahman, who is the corresponding author. Russell is with the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism, College of Applied Health Sciences, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The surveys asked whether people looked cool, popular and unique when they posted about their trips online. Possible destinations ranged from the more mainstream, such as France and spots in the United States, to less common destinations including Cuba and Slovenia. Participants were also asked if they would go to those same vacation destinations based on the posts they saw.
The generational split
The researchers found that social media influenced travel plans across all age groups, but Millennials were the most affected. They were more likely to say that people who post about their travels are cool and that this coolness factor motivates them to visit those same places and post about their own travels to boost their social status.
Baby Boomers were less drawn to similar posts and less likely to base their own trips on them.
Gen X, not Millennials, showed the strongest connection between social return and travel plans for conventional destinations like France and the United States. That finding points to a more nuanced picture than a straightforward ranking by age. Gen X appears to track social signals closely for familiar destinations, even as Millennials dominate the pursuit of off-the-radar bragging rights.
Baby Boomers were drawn to posts about mainstream destinations such as France, while younger generations, especially Gen Z, gravitated toward posts about less common locales. Co-author Sabrina Rahman explained the dynamic directly: “Gen Z won’t go with the flow. They’re always looking for novelty or adventure,” Rahman said. “Social media posts about some conventional destination won’t change their travel plans that much.”
Why the gap matters for everyday travel behavior
The finding adds a concrete, data-driven layer to a well-documented pattern of generational differences in leisure and consumer behavior. Earlier this year, research showed American teenagers spending less time with friends as social life shifts increasingly online, a shift that now appears to carry over into how people decide where to travel once they reach adulthood.
Prior research has shown that the anticipated social media status boost from posting travel content is a real and measurable force in travel planning. A new study published in Current Issues in Tourism builds on that foundation, examining whether that force hits differently depending on generation, and finding that it clearly does.
It also connects to broader patterns of how generations experience and share leisure, as explored in recent surveys on what Americans actually prioritize when they travel.
Millennials are most driven by online social status when it comes to unconventional spots like Cuba and Slovenia, chasing bragging rights over an off-the-radar trip. Gen Z, by contrast, gravitates toward less common locales regardless of social media cues, with Baby Boomers focused on mainstream destinations.
That divergence suggests that destination marketers targeting younger travelers with aspirational mainstream imagery may be reaching the wrong generation entirely.
Study details and context
The paper, titled “Social return and travel intentions: the moderating role of generational cohorts,” appears in Current Issues in Tourism, published online May 7, 2026, with DOI 10.1080/13683500.2026.2669626. The UGA press release on the research is available at UGA Today, and additional detail appears at Phys.org.
Across a final pool of 2,812 respondents drawn from six countries, the results reveal a generational divide across most destinations studied. The researchers say the work is intended to help tourism boards and destination marketers understand that a one-size-fits-all social media strategy is unlikely to move the needle uniformly across age groups.
The psychology of what a trip represents, they conclude, differs significantly from one generation to the next.
