Travel in Later Life: What an Eight-Person Study Found

What Was Roberson Looking For?

Roberson wanted to know whether travel could transform older people rather than merely entertain them (Roberson, 2001). Writing from the University of Georgia in December 1999, he argued that most research on older travellers served marketers by describing their preferences. It said little, in his view, about what trips did to the travellers themselves (Roberson, 2001).

His yardstick was Mezirow’s theory of transformative learning, which separates a meaning perspective, the overall frame used to judge experience, from the smaller meaning schemes inside it. In Roberson’s summary, full transformation opens with a “disorienting dilemma” and normally follows a major life event, such as losing a spouse (Roberson, 2001).

Travel looked like a promising place to search, since time away from home routinely produces small crises, and Roberson expected more of them for people travelling alone than for those on tours (Roberson, 2001).

Three research questions followed: what transformative experiences older travellers report, how they show themselves on a trip, and what conditions help when change occurs. The study appeared in Tourism in 2001 (Roberson, 2001).

Who Was Interviewed, and How?

The study rests on eight people. Roberson mailed questionnaires to about 50 people, received 26 back and chose eight of the respondents for semi-structured interviews (Roberson, 2001). The 1999 manuscript says the 50 came from the first author’s personal address book. His 2002 re-analysis of the same interviews says instead that people who knew them had recommended them (Roberson, 2001; Roberson, 2002).

Selection was deliberate, not random. Roberson looked for frequent travellers who were likely to have had significant experiences, and picked those whose questionnaires said a trip had been meaningful or had changed them (Roberson, 2001). That suits an exploratory search for transformation. It also means the group was chosen partly for the very outcome under study.

The group was also alike in other ways: three married couples, a single woman and a single man, all college-educated, healthy by their own account and all but one retired, aged 56 to 89 (Roberson, 2001).

Interviews took place mostly in participants’ homes and centred on the most meaningful trip and whether it had changed anything; transcripts were coded by constant comparison (Roberson, 2001).

Table 1. The eight interviewees, the trips they discussed and the change Roberson described

What Did the Study Find?

The headline finding was negative: no interviewee showed a perspective transformation that could be traced to travel (Roberson, 2001). Nor did Roberson find the truly disorienting dilemmas that would normally trigger one. What he did find was clear change at the level of meaning schemes (Roberson, 2001).

Comparing the eight cases, he grouped the changes into four themes (Roberson, 2001). The first was a broader view of what people thought they knew, built from contact with architecture, food, money, language and people. The second was a changed sense of self; the third, assumptions unsettled by new experiences; the fourth, a deeper and more complex understanding, which Roberson called complexification (Roberson, 2001).

Most of the shifts were modest. Mr Israel said a pilgrimage had strengthened a faith he had never doubted, and Mr and Mrs Belarus spoke of consuming less after visiting their daughter (Roberson, 2001).

Two cases came closer to deeper change. Mr Brazil found more racial stratification in Brazil than he had expected, which changed how he saw race relations at home, and Mrs Germany, 82, felt liberated by travelling alone after being widowed, though her dilemma came before the travel (Roberson, 2001).

Learning ran through every interview, from finding the way around to geography, and Roberson singled out unexpected “surprise-learning” (Roberson, 2001).

Roberson’s own conclusion was cautious. He warned that generalising from so particular a group needs care, and suggested that lives are transformed by travel only on rare occasions. Even so, he argued that trips can still change people in small but meaningful ways (Roberson, 2001).

A trip that deepens what someone already believes can matter a great deal without remaking who they are.

Which Parts of a Trip Seemed to Matter?

Four conditions came up repeatedly: a reflective guide, seeing a place for the first time, a sense of authenticity and close contact with local people (Roberson, 2001). Roberson had not set out to study them, but said the interviewees raised them too often to ignore (Roberson, 2001).

The guide as teacher

Every participant talked about the tour guide, who “can make or break a trip” (Roberson, 2001). In Roberson’s reading, an unhurried guide who invites questions and reflection can turn sightseeing into learning (Roberson, 2001).

First sights, authenticity and host families

Standing for the first time in a place one has read about had a marked effect, and living with families or mixing with locals deepened it, as Mr Brazil’s host family did for him (Roberson, 2001).

Small problems rather than crises

Everyday difficulties with language, money or directions worked as what Roberson called shallow dilemmas, and each traveller linked coping with them to greater self-confidence (Roberson, 2001).

Later research on transformative tourism points the same way: a 2017 study found that tourists did not reflect on existential questions until a triggering episode set off the search for meaning (Kirillova et al., 2017).

Does Travel Keep Older People Healthy?

Not demonstrably: a large US study links travel with better mental health and cognition in older adults, but no study reviewed here shows that travel causes these differences (Cole et al., 2024). Roberson’s own study measured no health outcome at all (Roberson, 2001). A 1998 pretest-posttest study of seniors on an escorted tour, which Roberson cites on another point, rejected the hypothesis that travel changes happiness (Roberson, 2001; Milman, 1998).

One large analysis of the 2006 US Health and Retirement Study, covering 7,037 adults aged 51 and over, found that long-distance travellers had higher cognitive scores and less loneliness, but the cross-sectional data cannot show an effect of travel (Cole et al., 2024).

Reviews differ in how far they go: a 2025 scoping review of 23 studies concluded that tourism can improve older people’s health (Bahrevar et al., 2025), while a 2022 systematic review of 56 articles judged the field limited (Chang et al., 2022).

Interview studies report what travellers feel: in a 2026 conference abstract, most of 588 adults aged 65 to 81 described feeling less lonely after leisure travel, a share of accounts rather than a measured change (von Humboldt et al., 2026).

The heart-health evidence often linked to holidays comes from middle-aged groups: more frequent vacations were associated with lower mortality among 12,338 men at high coronary risk (Gump & Matthews, 2000), and infrequent vacations predicted coronary events among Framingham homemakers (Eaker et al., 1992).

Table 2. Studies of travel, wellbeing and health, and what their designs allow

How Strong Is the Evidence?

As evidence about older people in general, Roberson’s study is weak, and it claimed at most to reflect educated, healthy and financially able older travellers (Roberson, 2001). Eight interviewees, drawn from about 50 contacts because they already valued travel, cannot stand for older adults at large. All were Americans, and each was interviewed once about trips they chose to recall (Roberson, 2001).

Its negative finding is its sturdiest result. Even among people picked because a trip had meant something to them, none showed a perspective transformation (Roberson, 2001). That makes the study a poor source for any claim that travel routinely remakes older people, and a fair one for the modest claim that trips shift knowledge, attitudes and confidence.

Later work on the same data adds no independent evidence: Roberson’s 2002 re-analysis of the eight interviews sorted their learning into four themes, but it is one study reported twice, not a replication (Roberson, 2002).

The wider picture is similar: evidence that travel transforms older people rests on small qualitative studies (Roberson, 2001), and evidence that it improves their health rests on observational associations (Cole et al., 2024).

What Do Older Travellers Need to Consider Today?

Mainly their health and access needs: according to AARP Research’s 2026 Travel Trends survey of committed US travellers, health and accessibility needs shape how people aged 50 and over travel, not whether they do (Choi-Allum, 2026).

Constraints shift with age: an analysis of seniors’ travel stories posted online linked ageing with a preference for “safe” options such as packaged tours (Kazeminia et al., 2015), where Roberson saw a reflective guide as the way to turn a tour into learning (Roberson, 2001).

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Eleanor Hayes — author

Eleanor Hayes writes with an editorial focus on research methodology and study design, including experimental and observational studies, controls, sampling, measurement and the methodological choices that shape scientific conclusions. At CAB Direct, Eleanor co...