Elder adventurers

Financial advisers, take note: Your clients may be aging, but they aren't necessarily old, at least in terms of how they spend their vacations. Americans over 50 increasingly are picking exotic, out-of-the-way destinations, according to Alan E. Lewis, chairman and chief executive of Overseas Adventure Travel. For those who choose to skip Florida or seeing the Eiffel Tower, the top choices in order of preference are Botswana, the Serengeti Plain (Tanzania and Kenya), Machu Picchu in Peru and the Galapagos in Ecuador, Turkey, other parts of Peru, Costa Rica, India, the Baltic states, China and Vietnam. “Today's traveler is healthy, physically fit and off the bus — eager to explore remote destinations, interact with local people and engage in cultural activities,” Mr. Lewis said. Increasingly, those travelers are women, and they are going solo. Almost three-quarters of the company's 50,000 travelers are women, up from 60% a decade ago, with one-third of them traveling alone. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, there are 94 million Americans over 50. For them, travel is the No. 1 pastime, with most taking four leisure trips a year. More than 40% of Americans are single, according to Census data, and more than 35 million have taken a solo vacation in the past three years, according to the Travel Industry Association. “Having raised their children and now at retirement, or close to it, many Americans over 50 are ready to play,” Mr. Lewis said.