Nostalgia is a business opportunity that event planners don’t seem to have taken seriously. This is a business opportunity that’s waiting to be exploited. I hear every day of groups ranging from school, college to office mates.. all now free and ready to mingle. Go off on tours and trips, have lunch/dinner even breakfast meets. All on their own seemingly without any organised effort.
Okay, let’s leave the planners out of this. How about hotels, resorts and all those getaway places offering deals for reunions? Why hasn’t anyone jumped on this gravy train? Because these 60-year olds, who consider 60 to be the new 40 with the additional benefit that they have the money and health to enjoy themselves, are footloose and fancy free. And they are prepared to shell out for the fun so gravy train it is.
Look at some of the older local schools with their organised Old Boys and Old Girls’ Associations. They get enthusiastic responses from the said Old Girls and Boys, everyone wanting to catch up and re-live the good ol’ days. Some Pune schools, the old ones with organised associations of former students, do have parties, at school and outside while smaller groups, of a batch or a House or just good friends get together separately. Some of these students come from overseas just for the reunion. Now that’s enthusiasm.
There’s nostalgia of the other kind, too: just people of the same age, different schools, colleges and professions but music is often a common bond. Now that is a segment with lots of players: there are singers who specialise in singing songs of the 1950s and 1960s, when melody was queen (or king). This is language agnostic, more or less: you get Hindi film music, Marathi `bhav geet’ or western music from rock ’n’ roll, R&B, Country, pop… there are takers for all and there are providers, too, of this vast range.
Parties are often organised around the music. It starts with, `Let’s have music from our time,’ and hey! that’s a party theme. So, the live music is arranged and it’s not cheap. Yes, there are several providers of what you want in a city like ours, professional singers to the amateurs and if they are singing in public, the amateurs are actually rather good. It’s also an opportunity for those with stacks of music, either records or downloaded from the Net, to air their collection.
The more adventurous groups go for trips out of town. I know of one such group which visited Kenya to see the annual animal migration as part of a landmark reunion! Closer home, they go to the beach or to the hills since that takes less time (and money, of course).
Hence my surprise, when so much is happening, how is it that event planners and local hotels haven’t got into the act. After all, hotels usually advertise their offerings for children’s birthday parties or kitty parties but nothing for those suffering an acute sense of nostalgia. I am sure they do offer discounts etc when the group leader negotiates but why not market their venues for nostalgia?
You see these groups everywhere and they are recognisable as a class (school, college, univ or office) gathering: everyone looks about the same age and the backslapping, laughter, jokes are all loud (and old). I saw one last week at a popular college hangout and heard `Those were the days my friend’ in my mind. Nostalgia, oh, yes! It’s a business opportunity which won’t end the way that song does!
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