A couple I know are currently visiting the UK from New Zealand, travelling through small villages and walking through graveyards.
Why? They’re searching for the graves of their ancestors.
Heritage holidays are becoming more commonplace, with recent research revealing that 23 per cent of long-haul visitors to Scotland were travelling there to track down their Scottish ancestry – resulting in around 213,000 visits to the nation per year.
While discovering your heritage need not be as morbid as walking through grave sites, Airbnb have just teamed up with DNA testing company 23andMe to create a very different kind of family holiday – as data from the travel site reveals there has been a 500 per cent increase in heritage holiday bookings since 2014.
The way it works is once a 23andMe customer receives their ‘Ancestry Composition’, they can see where their origins are and begin to plan a holiday. Airbnb have also created dedicated pages for travellers to create an end-to-end heritage holiday.
According to data from 23andMe, the UK’s most common ancestry links are:
1. France
2. Germany
3. Spain
4. Portugal
5. Italy
6. Poland
7. Croatia
8. India
9. Greece
10. Russia
Further research from Airbnb has found that 66 per cent of Brits who haven’t taken an ancestry test would like to and 29 per cent would like to travel to explore their heritage a bit further.
Here's hoping we have some Italian genetics, eh?
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