NEW YORK— Children have replaced parents as the primary family vacation planners, demonstrating a shift in the power of the Millennium Generation as consumers, said Lalia Rach, associate dean of NYU’s Preston Robert Tisch center for Hospitality, Tourism and Travel Administration. Americans between the ages of eight and 20 years of age have become extremely savvy consumers,” Rach said in a statement. ”They are now dictating where many families travel to on their family vacations.” Rach attributed the shift to a combination of social forces. “If both parents are working, and the kids program the VCR, surf the Internet or watch TV in their own bedrooms, chances are they are also are planning your family vacation,” Rach said in the same statement. She went on to say that vacations have become a “right, not a benefit, for Generation Y,” and that hotels, airlines, theme parks and the travel industry as a whole “need to recognize that kids as consumers are becoming more important than adults.”
