Dear valued coaches and community members,
I came across this unusual question recently while preparing for interviews and would like to share it with you, it goes like this:
“I have recently seen a brochure mentioning the top 1,000 places to visit in your lifetime, how many people do you think would be able to visit them all?”
Tackling this question was a little tricky without some the information from clarifying questions such as:
- How geographically dispersed are the 1,000 spots? This question would help in assuming how much time (in weeks let's say) it would take the average traveler to complete the trips.
- Accessibility of those places, which would affect travelers' capacity for the trip, for instance the top of Mount Everest is difficult to get to, and a Visa to North Korea would be out of the question for even -most of- the wealthiest of people.
How would you tackle such a question?
I would also be grateful if you had any thoughts on how I decided to tackle the question:
Approach: Use the U.S as a population base (for simplicity), and filter down to the number of people capable of completing the trip across their lifetime.
Steps:
1- Seperate Households into income/wealth brackets. I would take a minimum of Middle Income class and a net worth of around $250,000 as a qualification requirement for households, to make sure they could complete the multiple trips across time. My assumption would be that only 5% of households would fit into this bracket (I haven't checked the actual numbers in the spirit of simulating an interview scenario).
2- Estimate the average age and weeks per year of mobility for the average household member part of our reduced bracket. I assumed an average composition of a middle class household to be the following: 40 year old father, 35 year old mother, 10 year old daughter and 15 year old son. The average age of a household member would thus be 20 years old.
In terms of mobility, I opted for the assumption that the average household would have 3 weeks of holidays per year during which they could travel.
With a life expectancy of 80 years, an average age of 20 and 3 weeks of mobility per year, the average eligible household member would have 180 weeks of travel left in their lifetime.
From there, I would translate that into the amount of people in the U.S capable and then expand it to fit the global population. However, this last part is tricky as the U.S is one of the richest nations in terms of GDP per capita. This may be the biggest caveat in my approach.
What limitations would say this approach has?
Thank you for your time.
Best,
Bahaa.