Genetic testing home kits spark a travel trend – trips to find our roots, with ‘DNA travel’ agencies creating bespoke tours
- With cheap DNA testing, more people are discovering their ancestry, spurring a rise in heritage travel to research family roots or meet new-found relatives
- Tours can be tailored around the information travellers have, and often multiple generations of a family will take a trip together
Thanks to new technology, curious travellers are flying across the world in search of their roots. The emerging trend follows a surge in the popularity and accessibility of home-testing genetic kits that can trace roots back generations, to regions across the world.
“With the new-found knowledge about their heritage, travellers in record numbers are using their trips not just to get away on holiday, but to dig into the roots of their family trees,” says Edward Piegza, president and founder of Classic Journeys, a tour operator that curates holidays based on travellers’ ancestry.
“That sort of genetic impulse injects an extra level of excitement, and if a trip can help travellers feel more connected to their family and grounded in the world, so much the better,” says Piegza.
Many of these tours can be tailored around information travellers already have. For example, if they have traced their family tree, or know previous relatives migrated from a certain region.
EF Go Ahead Tours collaborates with Ancestry, the global leader in family history and consumer genomics, to tailor-make tours based on test results. Packages include an AncestryDNA kit and pre-trip family history review. A genealogist from AncestryProGenealogists also accompanies the group to shed light on their heritage along the way.
