Genetic testing home kits spark a travel trend – trips to find our roots, with ‘DNA travel’ agencies creating bespoke tours

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.

“Heritage tours are exclusive trips designed to help travellers discover their family story,” says EF Go Ahead Tours’ president, Heidi Durflinger. “DNA travel has been growing in popularity as many people are interested in travelling to the places their ancestors are from.”

Reality-TV shows in which celebrities travel the globe to retrace their roots helped kick-start the travel trend. For example, the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? saw celebrity chef Rick Stein travel to China after discovering his great-grandparents were Christian missionaries there.

Further propelling the travel trend, last year Airbnb teamed up with 23andMe, which offers home-testing genetic kits, to enable travellers to plan their own journey and delve deep into their heritage.

“When customers receive their ancestry report from 23andMe, they can visit Airbnb’s dedicated pages that correspond with 23andMe’s genetic populations, so travellers coming to Airbnb’s site can easily plan a heritage trip from start to finish,” says a 23andMe spokeswoman.

According to Airbnb, since 2014 the number of travellers using the online accommodation platform to reconnect with their roots has increased by 500 per cent. It says travellers aged 60 to 90 are the most likely to embark on heritage trails.

Additionally, 23andMe noted many customers booking travel plans to visit new-found family members, often for holidays or birthdays, after receiving their DNA results. Top destinations clients have visited in the global search for information about their family’s pasts include the US, UK, Mexico, Italy, China, Nigeria, India and Russia.

The travel trend is encouraging multiple generations of a family to make this journey of discovery together, tightening bonds. “We have seen a trend of multi-generational travel on our tours, as well as many families choosing to customise our heritage tour portfolio,” says Durflinger.

“It’s been inspiring to see family reunion groups travel and learn about their genealogy together.”

Grandfather Achilles Perry is familiar with his Greek roots. However, his grandchildren had never set foot in the country, having been born and bred in America. Keen to connect them with their heritage, Classic Journeys organised a week-long adventure to the island of Lesbos, from where Perry’s mother migrated to America.

As part of the trip, the family visited the town of Andissa, where Perry’s mother was born. Here, they were able to find her childhood home and explore the quaint town where she grew up. “We found [a] special time by returning to our family’s roots,” says Perry.

Piegza says the trips also serve as a way for families to bond, and look to the past to create memories to carry into the future.

“Parents and grandparents want to connect their kids and grandkids to the lands of their ancestors,” he says, “to see through their windows what they saw when they woke to a morning in Vietnam, Thailand or Myanmar, to help understand a world they’ve never seen, and how it influences the people they are today.”