Beyond Bucket Lists: Meaningful Travel For Women Over 45 with Pauline Frommer

This introspective journey with travel expert Pauline Frommer, President of Frommer Media, and Editorial Director of Frommer's Guidebooks, explores the transformative power of meaningful travel for women in their prime. Through personal stories, expert insights, and practical wisdom, Pauline shares how women over 45 can create profound travel experiences that honor their accumulated wisdom while opening new chapters of discovery.

Transcript

Beyond Bucket Lists: Meaningful Travel For Women Over 45 with Pauline Frommer

 [00:00:00] Welcome to Untethered and WanderWise, the podcast that takes you on a journey through the ever-changing world of travel. I'm Heide Brandes.

And I'm Nicky Omohundro. Today we're absolutely thrilled to have an incredible voice in the travel industry joining us. She's the president of Frommer Media LLC, the publisher of Frommers.com, and the editorial director of the Frommer Guidebooks. She's truly a cornerstone.

She's truly a cornerstone of one of the most trusted names in travel guidance. Please welcome Pauline Frommer. Pauline, it's such an honor to have you here. You've literally grown up in the travel industry. Could you share some of your earliest memories of travel and the industry as Arthur Frommer's daughter?

Well, I started traveling when I was four months old. So whenever I travel nowadays, I have a sense of deja vu and I don't know if it's real or imagined because there's a lot of places I've been to that I no longer remember. I guess my earliest memory of travel is dancing wildly in the Caribbean and then being carried into a car by my father who thought I was asleep, but I just wanted to be carried.

Oh.

So that's so fun. Now, so with so many different career paths available to you, what ultimately drew you to follow in your father's footsteps and join Brahmers? Well, I was an actor in my early twenties and actually as a teenager. So I wasn't planning to go into the family business originally but I always wrote.

I was an editor of the school paper. I was a total bookworm and my father would give me assignments and research to do. And eventually I realized that I enjoyed editing and writing far more than being an actor. As a woman, especially, well, as an actor, you have to be a product. You're not your own person in a certain, sense.

I mean, you're there to fulfill the ideals of others. And as a woman, that can get very problematic. You're always having to worry about how you look, how much you weigh, how old you look. And when you're a writer, you're creating the product. It's all coming from you. The same as with editing. And so I prefer being a person who is more in charge of my destiny.

 And that's what Fromers gave me. Also it's a great family business, we get to explore the world and we get to share it. My father deeply believed that travel can enhance the cause of world peace. That when you travel places, you will no longer be as scared. By people who look differently than you do or believe in different things or have a different religion you will recognize that we have more in common than we have that's different.

And and so that was a wonderful take on the world that he had that he taught to me. And that's at the basis of the Fromer travel guides. And I love that. That is an incredible philosophy. And I think Those who travel discover that for themselves. The world gets a lot smaller. We become a lot closer the more you travel.

But when you took over as editorial director at Frommer's, you must have had a specific vision in mind. Could you tell us about that vision and maybe how it's evolved over time from when your father started it? Well, when my father started it he was in the army. He was drafted into the army during the Korean war.

Oh, wow. And instead of being sent to Korea because he was the son of immigrants he spoke several languages and he had also studied them, but he learned them from his mother and father. And so instead of being sent to Korea, the day before he was going to be sent to Korea, somebody, he doesn't know who, somebody in the army figured out that he spoke German and Russian.

And so the Cold War was being waged at the same time as the Korean War. So he was sent to Berlin instead and he started traveling budget, which was almost nothing. He was the son of poor immigrants. He didn't have family money. And A lot of his fellow GIs didn't travel. You have to remember that World War II had just ended.

Europe was in rubble and they were nervous about safety. They thought, can we travel safely, without any money? And. When he got back to the base, they would pepper him with questions and he thought maybe I should write a little book. So he wrote a book called the GI's Guide to Europe. And when he got out of the army, that book morphed into a Europe on 5 a day.

So he was probably the first person to really say to the general population that you don't need a lot of money to travel well. He actually felt that you travel better when you travel on a budget. So that was the roots of the business and we still cover budget travel quite robustly. But we also felt that when we took back the books a decade ago, we felt like there was a hole in the industry, that there was a lot of information out there for backpackers and for budget travelers.

And there was a lot of information for luxury travelers, but there was nothing for the middle class. And so one of the things we decided to do with the books is put them squarely in the middle. So there's robust information if you are a budget traveler. And there's some information for people who may want to splurge.

You know, cause sometimes you do a vacation, you go to a very high end restaurant one night, and then you picnic at a grocery, with a grocery store meal the next. So we give our customers. guidebook writers, a formula, they are supposed to have 60 percent of their recommendations being right down the middle with a 20 percent high end and 20 percent budget.

So I guess that's how it's changed over the years in terms of our focus, but Also, the world has gotten overcrowded and tourism destinations have gotten overloved. And so we find that we have to do a lot more advice nowadays on how to avoid the crowds. And so we are very thoughtfully. Pushing people to secondary destinations that are often just as wonderful as the more famous ones or telling people how they can go in the off season or looking at crazy pricing structures.

I, all of our books are written by local authors. I write the New York City book and this year was particularly hard because of A. I. Dynamic pricing is making it near impossible to know what the actual cost of many attractions is. You want to go to, say, the Empire State Building. It's a different price at 9 in the morning.

Then it is at 5 p. m. and that price changes by a good 20, but you will not see that on the website. They ask you, when do you want to go and you have to put in a specific time and you only learn about the price for that specific time. So we're having to spend a lot of time telling travelers how to strategize better and how to navigate the mess that is dynamic pricing. I consider it surveillance pricing. Frankly there, there's a lot in the travel industry that is getting to be very consumer unfriendly. Yeah. And we met you in New York city recently, and I think you went to the empire state. State building during that visit.

I did, yes. And I did find that to be true. And even a lot of other attractions where you had timed entry into many of the attractions. And so it becomes very different. I mean, the whole climate about travel, it's really a very interesting time because not only do you have AI content and dynamic pricing, but you also have TikTok and Instagram and even just the general public providing information.

And a lot of times like with AI generated content, it's not always. It's accurate and factual. So people are, yeah, so people are showing up, they're like, Oh, we're here. It's a Monday. The attraction's not open on Monday, but Google told me it was. So it's interesting. We heard from a reader whose husband put the wrong middle name.

Yeah. Or misspelled, misspelled her middle name on a ticket. And she was scared that when they got to the country they were going to, she wouldn't be let in because of this mistake. So she called the airline and the airline said, Oh, sorry. You did this on Expedia. You have to contact them to change this.

And her husband went on to chat GPT and asked for the customer service line for. Expedia called it, started giving them information. They asked for her social security number. They asked for credit card numbers and it turned out chat GPT gave them a scammers phone. Oh no, that's horrible because there's nobody overseeing this information.

So it's a wild west. And you know, in terms of, [00:10:00] Influencers and bulletin boards where people share information, sometimes it's good, but sometimes I, I look at the New York City recommendations given on different bulletin boards and it's just the blind leading the blind. People. telling people to go to total tourist traps because they don't know better and influencers who are getting paid to gush.

With the Fromer Guides, all of our writers are paid. They never, ever take anything. Money from the venues that they're reviewing, our only client is the public. So even though it seems old fashioned, you're actually getting better information when you go to a trusted source like a newspaper travel section, or Fodor's, or Fromer's, or Lonely Planet or any of the old school media.

And two, and how do you see the role of traditional travel journalism evolving in this new climate? It's gotten hard. It's gotten hard for all media. Online, you know, all of our material was stolen by AI. Right now, when people go to Google and put in a travel question, the answer pops up. And we talked about how sometimes the answer is not correct, but two thirds of the people who now go to Google with a search stay on Google.

And so that's led to a 50 percent decrease in the last two years at the sites of the New York Times, of the Washington Post, of every other old media outlet. I'm a member of a publisher's group called the National News Media Alliance. And we went to D. C. before the last election to try and lobby about this, because we see it as outright theft that they trained their machines to replace us on our material.

It's the problem of living in the time of big tech. Yeah, and it's, it's ironic because I just did a story yesterday for a business newspaper about this very topic. And interviewed Nikki for this story because. You, you have seen that kind of impact with your site. On the travel website that I own, I lost 73 percent of my traffic over two years and all the ad revenue that came with that.

But even, large websites, they can't get organic search on some of their top performing articles. Yeah, it's, yeah. No it's a problem, not just in travel journalism. It's a problem, problem for democracies because you need. journalists with the funding to do the deep research about all of the issues that are confronting us.

And because big tech has made it impossible or very difficult, not impossible, more difficult for us to make a living, it's hurting democracy. And that brings up the A really good question about the value of travel. And you know, you have these travel journalists who are doing the deep dives who are doing the work, having reported features and not just AI generated content.

So what do you believe is the true value of travel in today's world, especially for women? Oh, well, I think for women right now, 60 percent of the travel decisions are made by women and women are getting out there into the world in numbers that they never have before, I think, because they see other women doing it.

And that makes us, It's all safer, it builds up our self esteem, it allows us to tackle problems and learn that we're stronger and smarter than we thought we were. I think that there's nothing better for the growth of a human being than, than travel. It just teaches you things in, in ways that other activities don't.

Mhm. And I think you said it best to at the very beginning when you started to travel as a young person, travel opens up your world and it shows you people that are different than. Each of us and it just opens up and has a great world view. I think especially now with, so much distrust with others and other countries and other people and the whole idea of other travel makes us realize how similar we all are around the world too.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. At basis, we all have to eat. We all want our Children to do well in life. We want safe water. We want clean air. We want an even playing field so we can build businesses that have a chance of surviving. And that seems to be the case. the case across borders. It's, that's the case everywhere on the planet.

We have, as I said before, we have so much more in common than we have that divides us. Yeah, definitely. So is there a particular destination that's profoundly challenged or even changed your worldview? That's an interesting question. 

I don't know if it's perfect. I went on a trip to Columbia and this is going to sound maybe shallow, but I decided to take a salsa tour. It was in the evening. They taught us how to dance salsa. And then they took us to four clubs. And I was the oldest person on that tour by maybe several decades.

 I was mostly, it was a lot of couples. I was traveling with my daughter and a friend of hers and they didn't want to do this. So they stayed at home. So I went solo or stayed at the hotel. And We went to club after club after club, and the other people in our group dropped away. It was four in the morning.

I was still out dancing. And I thought to myself, when I'm an old woman, I want to cherish this memory. of how beautiful life can be, and how much being in these crowds of people who I don't know, dancing to stirring music, can make you feel alive. And it was the first time I specifically gave myself the challenge.

Of creating a memory to sustain myself later in life. I think that, the pandemic showed us all that, that life can change drastically and not in a good way. And I think that's something that most people don't learn until the end of their lives. Since the pandemic, and since this trip to Columbia, I've traveled, I've tried to be more open to different experiences and really just grasp at the goodness of life while it's still available to me.

And I think that something that maybe was always floating around in my mind, but it really became very, very coherent on that trip to Columbia. And you're not alone. I'm in my 50s. I'm in my 50s. I'll be 50 this year. Nikki's turning 50 this year, but we're seeing a growing trend of women in their mid part of their lives.

Over 45 people my age, people older, really pursuing solo travel and taking these massive adventures and making these memories. But what are the unique challenges and also the opportunities you see for this demographic? You mean women traveling solo or women over the age of 45? How about both?

Okay. Well, women traveling solo, obviously there are safety things you have to worry about because in certain cultures, a woman traveling alone, is seen as somebody who may be a prostitute or maybe, just a loose person. I mean, there are different cultural norms that you have to be aware of and that I don't think affect men as much.

So you have to be, careful. I think more aware of what the dress is in the place you're going because women can offend people more than men can. Sadly, a man can, wear shorts in a culture that doesn't wear shorts and people will ha ha at him. Whereas if a woman does the same, there's a lot more judgment to it, I think.

So you have to be more aware of cultural norms. You have to trust your gut. If you're not feeling safe, get yourself out of a situation you're in, don't think, Oh, I don't know why I'm feeling this way. Just, you know, follow your gut. If there's a, if you feel it there's probably a reason for it, but there's also.

wonderful benefits that come from traveling alone. Because when you're traveling with a partner, you're pointed in towards each other. Whereas when you're alone, there's nowhere to point but out into the world, and you're more likely to meet people. I often eat at the bar rather than at a restaurant table when I'm traveling alone.

Just for that reason, so I can meet and talk to lots of people. Yeah, and on the subject of women traveling, what do you hope women who are going out and traveling? How do you hope that they'll be inspired by? Frommer's Guides, I mean, the nice thing about a guidebook, ours in particular, but even those of our rivals, is they give you everything you need to know in one easily carry, carryable book.

So you're going to learn. what you need to dress like, what the norms are culturally. You're going to learn how to use the public transportation system so you don't spend too much taking taxis everywhere. You're going to see a range of hotels from a writer who has been every single hotel so they can compare them.

You go to TripAdvisor, you're getting [00:20:00] advice from somebody who's been to exactly one hotel and has no idea that there's a cheaper and better one down the road. So you're getting expert advice from people who can compare and contrast and you're also getting a book that takes culture seriously.

So, our restaurant reviews, we tell our writers Don't just give a thumbs up and thumbs down. You want to be giving people or sending people to the places that will give them an experience they won't get in other destinations. Whether that's a hot new chef who's doing magical things or a restaurant that's been there for a hundred years and really speaks to the culture and history of a place.

It's not just about thumbs up and thumbs down. It's about creating guidance in these books that also takes into account the culture. And we know that a lot of people who read our books and other guidebooks don't read the history section. So I tell all our writers, sneak the history into the reviews, put them into the hotel reviews, put them into the restaurant reviews, so that people really understand.

the place they're going to. My father always used to say the biggest mistake you can make is to go to a place without doing any advanced research, which is what a lot of people do, and they just assume there will be somebody there to explain what they're seeing. But when you do advanced research with a guidebook or by watching a movie set in a destination or by reading a book of history, You bring yourself to it.

And, and when you get there, you have a richer interaction with the destination because you've had expectations. You've had thoughts and they'll either be right or wrong. And so it gives your vacation a lot more depth. And there are practical reasons for this too, because I know a lot of travelers rely too much on their phone or having Wi Fi and internet access. And if you're in a place where access is a little sketchy, having that physical guidebook makes all the difference in the world. Definitely. Yeah, and I think, too, having that historical nugget information, even if it's just a brief thing, it gives you such a greater appreciation for what you're seeing.

You know, you could be at the Colosseum in Rome, and it's nice and wonderful, but unless you have, like, that small thing that's going to tie you to it, It's just, it's not as good. It's just another building. Right. And frankly, even watching like the new gladiator movie will enhance your understanding and appreciation for the Colosseum and what went on there, if you're not a reader, sure.

Just, watching historic movies, documentaries, all that stuff. There was a, Study about happiness and travel, looking at, are people happier before, during, or after their vacations? Definitely it wasn't after. The people who were in the study reported the most happiness before the vacation, because you can't be disappointed in expectations.

There's something really magical about bringing your travels into your daily life. and dreaming on distant lands before you get to them. I think I saw that same study and it was just the very act of planning a vacation, boosted happiness levels exponentially. I think we saw that during the pandemic when none of us could travel on a regular basis.

People had to You know, postpone these big trips they had been planning for so long. So the pandemic really reshaped how we travel. How have you seen post pandemic travel change, particularly for mature travelers like Nikki and I? Well, I know there's been a boom in big ticket travel items among older travelers.

You have many more people going to Antarctica and the Galapagos Islands and places that are not in easy to get to. And there's been a corresponding boom in expedition cruise ships. It used to be that if you took an expedition cruise, you were sleeping in a bunk bed and eating very simple food. Now a lot of the more high end cruise companies are getting into it.

So it's become a more widely available. type of travel, although it is very pricey and one that's more comfortable than ever before. And that allows people who might have mobility impairments or other of the side effects of aging to do these more adventurous travels. Do you think it stems from when we were going through the pandemic?

I think you referred to this earlier in the conversation that You realize that nothing is promised to us anymore. Tomorrow's not promised anymore. So if you want to take that big dream trip, more and more people are doing it because There could be a pandemic tomorrow or something could happen to stop that.

Is that the trend that we're kind of seeing more people taking that dream trip? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. After being shut up at home, a lot of people just were stir crazy and, and took, took the trip. Didn't put it off. Even with inflation, which has cut down spending on other parts of the economy, it hasn't made that much of a dent in travel because people realize that experiences are far more powerful than things.

And so they're spending their savings or money on On, on experiences rather than on other types of purchases. And I'm saying that quite a bit. My birthday is coming up in a few months and we are going to Peru. Oh, wow. To Machu Picchu and that's a bucket list trip for me. And neither of us have been there.

So, so new continent for both of us. Great. So, do you think of specific destinations that you've been to and would recommend that are particularly welcoming or enriching to women over the age of 40? Definitely. Definitely. Gosh I would say Vietnam is a, is a place that is especially good for older travelers for the simple reason that When you go to Vietnam, one, the greeting that I got everywhere, and I assume is widespread, is, Hello, how old are you?

And I'm in my late 50s, so I would tell them that, or I'd tell them my specific age, and I usually got, oh, like my grandmother. And then they would have A long conversation with me because they really revere older people. And it's a cultural part of that of Vietnam that they think you have wisdom to impart.

And so to be in a place with that respect for people of our age. was a nice damn change, you know? So I, I really loved Vietnam. Also, I watched the whole Ken Burns series about the Vietnam War, which they call the American War. And at the end of it, Vietnam was in rubble. It just was destroyed. And so to see how well that country is doing today, how it came back, its resilience , was very, very moving.

You know, that's one of my top bucket list destinations that I'm hoping to get to this year. But after visiting so many places, what still excites you about travel? I mean, you meet people and they're like, Oh, yes, I've been to every seven continent and 50 different countries and it's travel. What still excites you?

Oh gosh, I was just in, in Vienna, where I hadn't been since I was a small child, and I went into one of their extraordinary museums, and I had known Egon Schiele's work and I've always loved Klimt, which is why I went to the museum, but learning about Schiele and seeing his work was amazing. an extraordinary experience.

I learned how to go to museums a couple of years ago. There was a technique that was actually studied by a college professor. Most people go to museums and they spend 30 seconds, if that, in front of each I think it's actually eight seconds. It's much less than 30 in front of each painting. And they come out feeling exhausted.

Like, like going to museum was a chore. And so he came up with the technique where you go into a gallery, you scan the room, and then the piece of artwork that. engages you is the one you engage with and you go up to it and you spend a good two minutes just looking at that piece of art and letting whatever bubbles up to the surface come out and it, it makes museum going revelatory.

It, it, it brings up thoughts of, about your own life and And so that that's part of it. The other part is talking to people. When I can have a deep conversation with somebody in a destination. I was in Taiwan and I went to this Buddhist monastery, which I consider the Disney world of Buddhism because you actually get into a little train and it takes you through the life of the Buddha with animatronic figures.

It was bizarre and fun and hilarious. [00:30:00] But our guide for most of the monastery was this Buddhist monk originally from Germany. And he and I had this extraordinary, conversation over the course of four hours about Buddhism, about life, about why he left Germany. And I'll never forget him. He felt like a kindred soul.

And I often get into those conversations when I travel, more so than I do in my daily life, because I think I'm more open to them on the road. So I'm curious, what's still on your personal bucket list? Oh, so many places. I, I get seasick on a swing, so I have not yet done Antarctica, but I would very much like to do that someday if I can figure out a way not to die in the Drake Passage, which is the, worse turbulence.

Yeah. Did how was it awful or was it okay? I was mixed between the Drake Lake and the Drake shake. So I did wake up in the middle of night and our bed was like vertical. Oh, we had the little patches you stick behind your ears and they help a lot, but they make you act pretty wacky. Hmm. Yeah. They can make you slightly psychotic.

I've had them on in other situations and either they work or if they get it all wet, they stop working. So, anyway. So Antarctica I'd like to go to. I'd like to go to more parts of Africa. I've only been to North Africa, like Morocco, Egypt, Israel, and Tanzania. I'd really love to go to South Africa. I spent a lot of time as a college student reading the tales of apartheid because I was always protesting that.

I was trying to get our college to divest its funds in South Africa. And eventually we won, actually. We got them to divest and so many other people did that apartheid, fell somewhat. I mean, there's still problems in South Africa, but for the most part international pressure helped. So yeah, South Africa is somewhere my heart really wants to go. 

What advice would you give to women who may be hesitant about traveling later in life? Especially if they've never done it before. I guess my advice is, you're gonna die soon.

What, why not? I mean, traveling probably won't kill you. And it, and it will open up your, your heart. Eyes to the wider world. I don't know if that's too blunt advice or if that, Oh, I love it. I love it. I mean, but you don't, you're, this is not a dress rehearsal. This is your life. And if you're letting fear stop you from something that millions of other people do, and it brings them joy, then you're cheating yourself.

You're robbing yourself. Get out there. What's the worst that could happen? Love that. What's the worst that could happen? You have fun.

Well, Pauline, this has been such an inspiring conversation. Where can our listeners find more information about Frommer's latest guides and your travel resources? Well, please visit me on Fromers. com and please take a listen to the Fromers Travel Podcast, which the New York Times named as one of the 13 best for travel and which I host. Congratulations. Thank you.

So that's all for this episode of Untethered and Wanderwise. Pauline, thank you so much. For joining us today. It was a pleasure speaking with you and remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on social media for more travel inspiration.

So until next time, keep exploring.