People who are 50 or older make about six non-business-related trips that will take them more than 50 miles away from home each year.

And regardless of whether the purpose of their journey is to visit family or enjoy a nice vacation, they’ll be using the Internet to do most of their travel planning, according to a study AARP conducted this past winter.

Based on interviews with more than 1,100 people 50 and older, the study found eight out of 10 people will use the Internet to plan their vacations and book their flights, hotel rooms and other travel-related services. The survey found boomers prefer visiting an individual hotel or airline company’s website over using a travel website such as Expedia or Travelocity, and that they are willing to spend as much as five to six hours on the Internet planning each trip so they can get the best deal.

Making the trip

The survey found almost 60 percent of baby boomers travel so they can spend time connecting with family and friends.

They prefer to take vacations that are five nights long or longer (43.6 percent) to making quick getaways that are less than two nights long (29.3 percent) or short vacations that are three to four nights long (31.6 percent).

When it comes to the reasons for making these trips, more boomers said they would rather attend a family occasion like a wedding, christening or graduation (29.3 percent) than to see or do something different (24.4 percent) or relax on a beach (22.8 percent).

Boomers also enjoy traveling so much that when they are not actively doing it, they are watching it on TV. The survey found 56 percent of boomers watch travel television shows and that their three favorite travel TV hosts are Rick Steves (36.7 percent), Anthony Bourdain (22.3 percent), and Samantha Brown (20 percent).

Planning the trip

The study found that while people 50 or older would rather only spend an average of three hours and 12 minutes planning their vacations online, they actually end up spending five hours and 30 minutes. They’ll spend 3.3 hours booking their travel reservations online, according the study, which is about one hour and 20 minutes longer than they’d rather have spent.

The study also found people in this age group will visit four separate websites as they make their travel plans and three separate websites booking their reservations, but they’d prefer to use only two websites for planning and 1.5 to book.

The study found people are willing to combat these frustrations because they want to get the best deal (67.5 percent for planning and 58.9 percent for booking), they cannot find the information they want on just one website (60.6 percent for planning and 43.6 percent for booking) and because they don’t have the confidence that one site is capable of meeting their needs (24.6 percent for planning and 22.6 percent for booking).

— Reporter: 541-617-7816, mmclean@bendbulletin.com