Traveling for the Memory: Exploring Memorable Experiences in Skip-Gen Travel

Skip-gen travel, where grandparents travel with grandchildren without parents, is an emerging form of intergenerational tourism centered on emotional bonding and memory-making. This study conceptualizes skip-gen travel as a memory-driven experience and draws on thematic analysis of interviews with 80 grandparents in China. It explores three dimensions of memory: (1) memorable aspects of the trip, (2) how grandparents wish to be remembered, and (3) how they hope the trip will be remembered. Findings highlight emotional bonding, novelty, educational enrichment, and nature-based experiences as central to memory formation. Grandparents expressed a desire to be remembered as caring, joyful, and emotionally present, using strategies such as storytelling, photography, and symbolic gestures to preserve memories. Memory narratives varied by co-residence status and travel frequency. The study extends the memorable tourist experience framework to intergenerational caregiving contexts and emphasizes the role of travel in supporting legacy transmission and relational memory in later life.