Club Avandra’s Lifestyle Director Marianne Jones has discovered that, at the age of 61, she is suddenly part of a viral travel trend popularised by Gen Z adventurers.
‘‘Who knew, at the age of 61, that I’d suddenly be at the forefront of a new Gen Z trend?’
Travelmaxxing is the viral buzzword of 2026, used to describe adventurers who actively enjoy squeezing the pips from their holiday – taking in as many sights, destinations and experiences from a single trip as is humanly possible.
The very opposite of lounging by the pool, travelmaxxing can involve ‘extreme day trips’ that involve flying to a country early in the morning, exploring the backside out of it and returning home the very same night. Or packing five countries into two weeks annual leave. According to Forbes, travelmaxxing breaks are up 62% on last year.
How ridiculous and exhausting was my first thought. Then it dawned on me that since the break-up of my marriage two years ago which coincided with me entering a new decade, I have been running at life too. I have just returned from 11 days in Ecuador and the Galapagos islands, that involved six plane journeys, one five-day boat ride and hours of bumpy roads. I visited street markets and monasteries in Quito, fed hummingbirds from my hand and trekked through waterfalls in the rainforest, and spotted blue-footed boobies before swimming alongside seals in the Galapagos. I rose at 6am most mornings and after a non-stop itinerary, slept as soundly as the dead every night.
It comes on the back of a weekend food and culture whizz-through of Paris, a six destination solo trip across Italy and eight nights in northern India, inhaling the spice markets of Delhi, Jaipur’s pink temples and the shimmering waters of Udaipur. No downtime, no sunbathing, just the pure buzz of sights, sounds and smells.
I have just received my boarding cards for a family trip to Malta next month, to celebrate my sister’s big birthday. An inter-generational knees-up, where for the first time I will show off my late mum’s birthplace to the girlfriends of my grown-up sons. I will be returning to my motherland next year too – hopefully with some of you in our Club Avandra crew.
So, I am officially a Gen X travelmaxxer. Yet unlike the Gen-Zers and millennials whose aim is to see as much as possible on a shoestring, I’m doing it for pure enjoyment in relative luxury.
My backpacking, musty two-star room days are long gone. When I think back to my youth, when I once hitchhiked from Madrid to Portugal with a boyfriend and a two-man tent – both of which I longed to ditch – my lasting memories are not of the sightseeing but the scraping together of pesetas for a basic bocadillo or the tent being attacked by a pack of wild dogs.
By the time I’d earned enough money in my 30 and 40s to afford a hotel or villa holiday in Mallorca or Greece I was too exhausted nurturing marriage, motherhood and my career to do anything more than fry in the sun, read and sleep.
But now! Well, having been through the most painful two years of my life, I have entered my ‘f**k it list’ era. So, for the forseeable future I’m taking on the young guns by travelmaxxing the hell out of life my way – in style and comfort.
