Why the student gap year is more popular than ever

This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).

For decades, the gap year recipe remained virtually unchanged: cheap hostels, all-night parties, banana pancakes and months spent ‘finding yourself’. Throw in some bungee jumping, quad biking and moped riding, along with days doing not very much, and you quickly paint the stereotypical picture of the fabled ‘year out’ of old.

The gap year travellers of today, though, are far more likely to be found doing  sunrise yoga on a beach before a day of volunteering. Evenings are less about getting blind drunk and more about  sitting around a campfire, herbal tea bubbling away on a stove, discussing the day’s work.

Once synonymous with those taking a break between A-levels and university, or after a degree, the gap year has evolved into a catch-all that includes anyone seeking an escape before joining the workforce. And according to Student Universe, the world’s largest youth travel agency, the post-pandemic era has seen the biggest shift in students’ desire and motivation to travel in 50 years.

While pure ‘leisure’ — fly and flop, adventure tours and festivals — still has a place in the market, the prevailing trend among gap year students is for educational or vocational trips.

“Their main goal is to do something ethical and responsible,” says Milly Whitehead, co-founder of specialist gap year travel company The Leap. “We’ve seen a huge growth in the demand for volunteering programmes and trips that have a proper structured itinerary. 

“They’re so much more discerning and into the fine detail of what a trip will involve than what we’ve seen in the past. The aim really is for a year out to add something to the future value of their CV and their UCAS [Universities and Colleges Admissions Service] form.”

It is a stark change from even a decade ago, Whitehead says, when most gap year travellers were happy flitting about until the kitty dried up and it was time to fly home.Her assessment is consistent with the findings of The State of Student and Youth Travel in 2024, the latest annual report by Student Universe. It surveyed 6,000 members of Generation Z — generally defined as those born between the mid-1990s and the late-2000s — in the UK, US, Canada and Australia to assess their motives for travel.

Reports show that a large majority of Gen Z believe embarking on a gap year will boost their job prospects back home.

Photograph by Luis Alvarez, Getty Images

It suggested 79% would embark on a trip with the main intention being that the experience would make them more employable. It’s a theme that runs through the report: around 87% believed vocational travel would improve their employability, while 86% said they’d sign up to volunteer on a project related to their ideal future career path.

Jemma Gore-Booth, 21, says about half her year group at Emanuel School in southwest London decided to take a gap year before going to university. “Taking a gap year was common,” she says. “Of my nine closest friends, five travelled. I worked as a teaching assistant in London to build up funds and then started with a month in Sri Lanka volunteering as an English teacher before travelling to Thailand and Vietnam.”

When Gore-Booth set off for her year abroad in 2021, there were still strict Covid protocols in place, especially in Asia, and the looming threat of further restrictions. Such risks, she says, still made it a more attractive proposition than online learning, plus she’d always intended to take a year out. “I really didn’t want to do any of my university degree online, but I was also nervous about the travel situation,” she says.

Gore-Booth is far from alone. Latest figures reveal that a record number of British teenagers who studied for GCSE and A-levels through the pandemic opted to take a gap year before starting further education. Figures from UCAS, released last summer when A-level results were published, showed more than 73,000 students applied to defer their place for a year — an increase of almost 10% compared to the previous year.

Jump around

One of the biggest shifts Whitehead has seen in the 20 years since she and her husband Guy founded The Leap is the pace at which people want to travel. “It really needs to be pacy to keep everybody focused and energised,” she says. “Heaven knows how we kept people entertained for eight weeks back in the day. It was more go and teach in a school in the morning, maybe do something else in the afternoon… but all much slower. That just doesn’t wash now.” These days, she adds, “it has to be ‘bang, bang, bang’: a variety of projects, a variety of adventures. Every day has to be different.”

Experiences offered by The Leap include volunteering with organisations such as Oceans Alive Trust, a non-profit organisation that works to halt coral loss and boost fish stocks; beach cleaning in Costa Rica; or assisting with a community reforestation project in Barichara, Columbia. Most programmes average about five weeks and include language learning alongside training in a skill, such as diving.

The demand for more structured programmes is a trend that Student Universe is also adapting to. “That desire of younger travellers to think ‘I’ll get on a flight and see where life takes me’ has shifted somewhat,” says Sam Willan, vice president of global marketing. “Maybe it was blissful ignorance, but now our travellers definitely want to feel more looked after.”

Willan says the company has also seen a gradual move towards young people taking several shorter trips over the course of a gap year, as opposed to one long adventure. These typically follow a similar pattern: a learning holiday, a working or volunteering trip and then travelling.

Southeast Asian countries are becoming less popular destinations for gap year travellers in favour of Central and South America.

Photograph by Dmitry Rukhlenko, Getty Images

“It all comes down to career development again,” he says. “There’s a real drive among gappers to end up with experiences that will bolster their CV while building themselves as culturally aware, well-rounded individuals.”

When participants in the The State of Student and Youth Travel in 2024 were asked ‘what appeals to you about taking a vacation?’, partying and clubbing came bottom, with just 21% of the 6,000 respondents selecting it. Top of the list was sightseeing and city activities (70%) followed by experiencing different cultures (68%) and relaxing and rejuvenating (61%).

According to Willan, gap year operators are also reporting subtle shifts in the countries gappers are choosing, with former staples in Southeast Asia — notably Laos, Thailand and Vietnam — losing some of their lustre and the likes of India, South Africa, Brazil and Peru on the rise. 

Whitehead reports a similar trend, with destinations that were among the first to lift Covid border restrictions benefitting from a rise in student travellers. “Central and South America were the first to reopen after the pandemic and really started the drumbeat,” she says. “What we’ve seen is that as more students have travelled there in recent years, word of mouth has followed through year groups.

“There’s a feeling they offer more contrast geographically than Southeast Asia. Take Peru, you can be in the Andes one day, on the Amazon the next and on Rainbow Mountain the day after.”

For working trips, Australia, New Zealand and Canada are the standout, thanks in part to their Commonwealth status, which opens doors to young travellers from the UK, according to Jenza, a travel agency specialising in working holidays.

Last year the UK signed agreements with all three countries to expand the Youth Mobility Scheme visa, increasing the age limit from 30 to 35 and the maximum length of stays from two to three years.

“Working holidays are more accessible to today’s youth, as they break down what’s undoubtedly the biggest barrier to entry: money,” says Lucy Lynch at Jenza. Options for students today are, however, more limited than they were. Villa staff, chalet boys and girls, resort reps, childminders and sailing instructors were the mainstay of British package holidays and extremely popular gap year jobs — until Brexit.

The UK’s departure from the EU cut off the ability for young people in the country to easily work overseas and reduced the number of services available to holidaymakers. A recent report by trade bodies ABTA and Seasonal Businesses in Travel (SBiT) revealed the number of Britons fulfilling tourism roles overseas has fallen from 11,970 in 2017 to just 3,700 in 2023.

This, SBiT says, has a disproportionately greater effect on young people, who’ve traditionally filled such seasonal jobs — working for holiday companies in a year off, say, or during the summer break. It’s also had a huge impact on chalet holidays, beloved of British skiers, which relied heavily on gap year staff who were happy to work for less money in return for bed, board and a lift pass for the season.

Charles Owen, managing director of SBiT, says: “It’s proving tremendously difficult to employ the UK staff we need to run our businesses in the EU. In some countries, it’s a mountain of complex paperwork, delays and extra costs that need to be overcome; in others, there isn’t really a workable route.”

ABTA is calling for an enhanced seasonal mobility agreement between the UK and EU for tourism workers, as current arrangements apply only to certain roles and limit stays to 90 days. It’s also calling on the UK government to work to extend the Youth Mobility Scheme to the EU.

“There’s nothing stopping us doing this,” says Luke Petherbridge, director of public affairs at ABTA. “It is mutually beneficial, not least for the individuals who take part in the scheme and get to live and work overseas. Critically, it’s not part of the wider immigration regime. The mobility scheme doesn’t confer any longer-term rights to remain for those that have taken part.”

Many people in the travel sector are hoping that a change in government will pave the way for a closer relationship with the EU and forge a route for young Britons to work in the bloc without expensive, bureaucratic hurdles, which most travel companies can’t afford. SBiT estimates the cost of recruiting a young person from the UK for seasonal work in France (the most popular ski destination for the UK) has risen by £880.

One of the biggest decisions gap year students face is how to fund their overseas adventure. Research by recruitment agency Teaching Abroad found that one in five young people rely on parents to help pay for a year abroad. Others, however, are more self-reliant. Minnie Fisher, 18, is currently on a five-month trip taking in New Zealand, Australia and Southeast Asia. She’s paid for the trip by working from last summer until leaving in January this year.

“It was hard work but worth it,” she says from Nusa Penida, an Indonesian island near Bali. “After finishing my A-levels last year, I worked pretty much full time in a local cafe and I also did lots of babysitting, too. I saved up £11,000 in all. We used £3,000 for flights and I left with £8,000 in the bank, although I really want to end the trip with at least £2,000 left over.”

Gore-Booth is also planning another year out once she finishes her degree at Newcastle University.“No matter what, it would have to involve some element of earning money,” she says. “I’d also want it to contribute in some way to my CV and future work. I’m thinking I’ll do a TEFL [Teaching English as a Foreign Language] course and then go teach English somewhere like Vietnam. I think that would be a brilliant experience.”

Published in the June 2024 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).

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