Upper Middle Class not well travelled AIBU?

[Tabbytiger122]

There are some very wealthy folk we know & some I'm acquaintances with on fb from college. All seem to run off similar schedule for holidays... Christmas skiing in France/Switzerland (same place every year) Midterm said place again, summer is always spent somewhere in France ,Italy or Greece (but always the same town)
That's it never different countries... it seems to me they are not well travelled & that familiarity is more important than going somewhere new for the heck of it! Aibu?

I think this says more about the people you know than the entire upper middle class.... we know people who keep going to the same places, but probably know more people who travel to really unusual places and never go to the same place twice.. it's a fairly sweeping statement you're trying to make.

I couldn't muster up the energy to get upset about this, as you are. You'll say you're not but you very clearly are triggered for some reason.

Have you considered, OP and others, that people just have different priorities and preferences, especially if their day to day life is different from yours? We have been going on the same holidays (same place, same house, same friends and indeed even same clothes) since I was 2 months old- and my family had been going there for 30 years by then. We simply love the place, the pace of life, our local friends and the friends who, like us, decided to set up a permanent family holiday base there. It means the holidays are easy and require no planning aside from throwing together some pants/socks/t-shirts etc and book flights or trains whenever they are cheap. When we arrive, we know we will bump into friends at the bakery or the supermarket and can organise a hike together for later that day. Also, it means we can holiday with grandparents and cousins that we would not otherwise see much of, as we live in different countries. All of this is prized much much more than the hassle of having to go somewhere new, taking half the house with you and not quite knowing whether what you have booked will be good quality or not.
I get asked quite regularly whether we are going somewhere long-haul or a cruise or whatever. I have no wish to do so: I travel a lot and need to be super-organised for work so in the holidays I just want to be with family and friends somewhere I love.
Those whom you observed may have different reasons, but I can tell the person who wrote about social standing signifiers and finding out whether people are of the same social group etc, that I have never come across anyone who cares in the least. And in fact most people I know (me included) don’t disclose where we go, we were brought up to stay vague: “in the mountains” or “go hiking and see family” is my standard response.

This isn't a class thing. I know working class people who holiday in the same place every year. I also know working class people who are well traveled. If you're thinking you'd travel more if you had their money you can do it on the cheap. Short breaks/hostels/looking out for deals.

For me personally if I had that sort of money to spend I wouldn't be in France or Greece at the exact same place every year I'd be in Barbados or Mauritius

If you really enjoyed it and had the best holiday ever, would you go back the following year?

What's wrong with going to the same places if that's what they choose?

If you prefer different places each time great. But it's not a reason to judge people who don't.

It will be due to owning property in these places or they have established relationships with hoteliers.

Children like familiarity and repetition, we never went to the same place twice before kids but now holiday the same place every summer as the children are so relaxed there.

Not sure why it’s your business how ‘upper middle classes’ spend their money or their time? I suspect we are what you would define as UMC: 7figure income, two homes, two luxury cars, all of us educated to at least degree level/at uni, parents with professional qualifications, DC were privately educated to 16, oh, and the obligatory spaniels? Ie is it’s about money for you, isn’t it, not ‘class’ per se?

We just do the one annual fam holiday and DH did used take the DC skiing in Feb each year as I hate it. But part of our UMC lifestyle is that DH works 12-14hr days, 7 days a week, travels overseas 40% of the time with work, is based in London mon-thurs minimum when not travelling, and our kids were either in school, or now, uni. We actually enjoy being at home together as that is more of a novelty for someone who is often not in the primary home with the kids and dogs for more than 8 nights a month. The annual holidays have been in the US, Mexico, far east in the past so we and kids are well travelled enough. They prefer short hall/Europe though tbh.

I think you, like other threads I’ve read lately, have a SM fed idea of MC life - no we don’t eat out one day a week, or holiday all summer in Nice etc. We’re as likely to go to a rock gig as we are La Boeheme; DH goes to an overseas grand prix once a year and a golf holiday with his mates for one long weekend a year, We go to the theatre/opera/ballet/gigs 6-12x a year, to cricket at Lords/Oval half a dozen times, Wimbledon if lucky enough to get a corporate invite or, once, because we won the ballot. We shop at M&S and Waitrose and Sunday lunch was a £42 sirloin, 30 day aged beef joint for 4 people yesterday [and the dogs] and a £18 bottle of red (better than any overpriced restaurant). We can’t be bothered with golf club memberships and posh country club gym memberships because when would DH in particular have the time to use them given his work schedule? Plus the people in them are not ‘our type’ of people. We just love long country walks with the spaniels, a few drinks in a country pub or on our own patio afterwards.

That’s plenty MC for us. Being MC is about being comfortably off enough - privileged enough - to have access to a wide variety of cultural activities, the funds to support it, and choices about how we spend our time and money… which is usually about being together as a couple or a family and very often revolves around being in one of our homes because we love them and spent years renovating and getting them to the standard they are.

Human tribes also used to migrate and move around in groups, so seeing someone you know in a faraway place has an oddly powerful bonding power

I once bumped into a woman who works in my local chemist in a cafe in Antigua.
It was bizarre. You know that thing where you see someone who's really familiar and you speak to often - but you can't place them because they're out of context? Well that happened to both of us. Blank stares for a few seconds.
Completely bizarre.

In my experience as an observer—I’m from one of those “symbolic” holiday spots where middle and upper-middle class families spend their summers—these people are also big savers, so the holiday home was likely inherited.
And, very importantly, they use the place for networking with other similar families.

They probably have family homes there. We had a family house in France and went there multiple times a year, it was a home from home with all our clothes and a lovely pool we didn’t have to share with strangers.

Not sure about the class thing at all. What?

My family have gone on holiday to the same part of the West Country almost ever year since my father was born in 1934. No holiday home, just B&Bs, cottages, tents, whatever. It feels like strong roots and the familiarity holds the generations together. When I’m there now I feel my parents and grandparents, my DC when they were young, I can picture my future grandchildren. We all go to the same places and discuss the slightest change. It’s fantastic! Each year’s holiday just blends into one big celebration of family in the memory.

We've all travelled widely as well, together or separately. Those trips are great too, but fulfil a different need I think.

Particularly enjoying all the replies telling OP she's narrow minded, envious and/or simply doesn't understand, definitely not qualified to wonder about something she's observed ... while also playing top travel trumps on who's better travelled by the most exacting definition and has holiday homes in more desirable places 😏

Oh, silly, you wouldn't like Barbados or Mauritius in the summer! Don't you know when the stormy seasons are? You wouldn't leave the hotel in any case: your sort never do, except to grab an Insta photo. If you were really well travelled like me, you'd have had enough of that by now and use your holidays to relax in the family beach house or mountain chalet. Or <tinkly laugh> if you don't have any, just go to your favourite aparthotel in the Canaries, you'll find you soon feel at home with People Like You and be happy to see them every year. Do you see, darling, we're not so different after all!

Yes I know some families like this. In fact there is one family in particular who we are quite good friends with, but DH and I have commented on how different their approach to holidays is. They have quite a lot of money and come from a posher background than us. They have a family holiday house somewhere fairly remote in Italy. They spend part of the summer there every year and the mother has done that since she was a child. But they know almost nothing about Italy at all. They can't speak Italian. They drive but have never stopped on the way to visit Italian cities or explore different parts of Italy/Europe. They also go skiing regularly. They don't do any other holidays that I can think of, except they have on family member who through work has lived in a couple long haul destinations so they visited them there. They are lovely people, but we do find their lack of interest in exploring different places interesting.

I have significantly reduced travelling by plane to reduce my carbon footprint. Therefore most holidays now are in Europe.

Maybe they don’t worry about status and don’t feel the need to “prove” how upper middle class they are by making a point of holidaying in Thailand one year and trekking the Hindu Kush the next.

In my experience a lot of upper middle class people nowadays are quite anti flying and less likely to want to fly on holiday than much poorer people. It will be ferries to a gite in Normandy or Eurostar skiing.

I'm not sure the going to the same place every year is class related - I think quite a few people like things to be predicable, they don't feel comfortable with change and like to surround themselves with familiarity.
I need to go somewhere different - I can't even stay in the same location for longer than 4 days...the thought of returning to the same place every year leaves me cold. Fortunately dh feels the same and our dcs have never known any other way. I love arriving somewhere new and sussing out the scene, the change is refreshing and exciting.

I’m as smart as they come. I go to Nong Khiaw in Northern Laos every year and sleep in a bamboo hut with no air con and massive🕷️. Everyone is different.

Love this, was thinking the same thing!😂

btw, I'm not sure why you are getting a hard time here? You are not having a go at them for making these choices. You are not worrying about it. You are not amazed that other people make different choices from you. You don't think this is the burning issue of the day. You are just making a casual observation, musing a little and then starting a conversation about it, just like most of us presumably do in every day life. Mumsnet would be lacking something if no-one did this.

Only for the people who don't like travelling anyway.

It was the mention of class that did it. It's not really possible to discuss class on MN (and more widely in the UK, tbh) without hitting people's buttons. An observation like OP's has an extraordinary ability to offend almost everybody, and to make everyone else feel that they either need to defend themselves or explain the nuances of the class system

Maybe because it’s easy you know your way around you may know some people.

I'm not sure what the point of the op is. Have these people claimed to be well-travelled? Is it necessary for someone to be well-travelled? What is actually meant by being well-travelled?

I think there are a lot of people ticking off countries and/or sights, but that doesn't mean they are well-travelled. I think you need to live somewhere really to know what it's truly like.

There's nothing wrong with going to the same places regularly. As people get older, I think they prefer this. When my parents first retired, they went on holidays all over the place. Ten years later and they have a handful of places they like and return to regularly.

Personally, I prefer to go to new places. However, we do tend to revisit the same country, but different parts of it, until we decide to try somewhere else.

I do think people need to be travelling less tbh.