Travel has become very good at saving time. We can book a flight while waiting for coffee, ask AI to build an itinerary before breakfast and find the “best” restaurant in a city we have never visited. We can translate the menu, navigate the streets, and photograph the sunset without ever taking our eyes off a screen. Yet one of the more intriguing travel trends emerging now asks us to do something much less efficient: sit down, eat, listen, and learn.

Enter nonnamaxxing.

The word combines nonna, Italian for grandmother, with the internet suffix -maxxing, meaning to deliberately embrace or maximise something. In travel, nonnamaxxing means seeking out the knowledge, food, skills and everyday rituals traditionally associated with grandmothers — perhaps learning a family recipe from an Italian nonna, joining an older local woman in her kitchen, hearing stories about a neighbourhood or learning a craft that has travelled through generations.

It does not necessarily mean travelling with your own grandmother. It is about seeking the kind of personal encounter that makes a destination feel lived-in rather than merely visited.

At The Asian Footprints, this connects naturally with our long-standing belief that SLOW IS THE NEW SPEED. The point is not to reject efficient travel, but to leave enough room for the things efficiency cannot produce: familiarity, conversation and context.

And there is a lovely irony here. The world may have just found a name for something Asia has understood for generations.

GRANDMA HAS MANY NAMES

Across Asia, Grandma comes with an impressive collection of names. In China she may be Nǎinai, Wàipó or Lǎolao, depending on the side of the family. In Japan, Obāsan; in Thailand, Yâa or Yǎi; in the Philippines, Lola; in Korea, Halmeoni; in Vietnam, Bà; in Indonesia and Malaysia, Nenek; and in Cambodia, Yeay. In Sri Lanka, she may be Achchi in a Sinhala-speaking home or Pāṭṭi in a Tamil one.

India has an extraordinary vocabulary of its own: Daadi, Dadima, Naani, Dida, Thakuma, Aaji, Ba, Ajji, Ajjiamma, Paati, Ammamma, Aita and many more.

The names vary with geography and language. The cultural role often does not. She is the person who remembers the recipe nobody wrote down, knows why a festival dish is prepared in a particular way and can tell you what the neighbourhood looked like before the new buildings arrived.

She is also, across an astonishing number of cultures, the person who thinks you have not eaten enough.

Some traditions are remarkably resilient.

THE ORIGINAL CULTURAL GUIDE

Italy may have supplied the name, but the idea has much deeper roots. The Italian nonna has long been associated with regional food, family and the preservation of local traditions. Travellers are now increasingly seeking experiences with grandmothers who can teach them traditional cooking, crafts, or other aspects of everyday life.

The interesting part is not simply the activity. It is the story attached to it.

A cooking class can teach you how to make pasta. A grandmother may tell you who taught her, why the recipe is made that way and how it changed when the family moved from one part of Italy to another. Suddenly, a plate of food has acquired a biography.

That is what makes this form of travel different from simply consuming local culture. The traveller is not only seeing or tasting something; they are being given a little context for why it matters.

ASIA DIDN'T NEED A HASHTAG

For much of Asia, this is hardly unfamiliar territory.

In India, grandmothers have traditionally been custodians of recipes, rituals, family histories, and oral traditions. A Bengali Thakuma or Dida, a Tamil Paati, a Kerala Ammamma, a Karnataka Ajji or a North Indian Daadi might pass knowledge to the next generation without ever thinking of it as cultural preservation.

The same pattern appears across China, Japan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia. Much of what younger travellers now seek under the banner of “authentic experiences” once happened naturally around family tables and in neighbourhood communities.

The difference is that the family structure itself is changing.

THE NUCLEAR FAMILY PARADOX

Urbanisation, migration, smaller homes, and international careers have made Asian families more geographically dispersed. Grandparents and grandchildren who might once have shared a home may now live in different cities or countries.

That helps explain the rise of multigenerational and skip-generation travel.

Hilton's 2026 travel research found that 79% of Indian respondents had taken or planned a skip-generation holiday, travelling with grandparents or grandchildren without the middle generation. In China, the figure was 86%.

The family holiday is therefore acquiring another function. It is not simply a break from routine; it can become the place where generations find time for one another.

A destination, in such cases, is almost secondary. The shared journey is the real itinerary.

LESS CHECKLIST, MORE CONNECTION

Nonnamaxxing also raises an interesting question for tourism: does every experience need to be spectacular?

A walk through an old neighbourhood with someone who has lived there for 60 years may reveal more than a conventional sightseeing tour. A home-cooked meal may tell a traveller more about a region than another restaurant tasting menu. Learning a traditional craft from the person who inherited it from her mother can make a souvenir suddenly mean something.

None of this requires a new attraction. It requires access to the people who already make a place distinctive.

A BUSINESS IDEA WITH A HEART

For destinations, hotels, DMCs and tour operators, that presents a genuine opportunity. Italy can take grandmother-led culinary tourism beyond pasta into regional food histories. Japan can build neighbourhood walks, home cooking, and craft encounters around older residents. Thailand could connect visitors with community elders through northern cuisine, traditional crafts, and village life. Sri Lanka could develop Achchi-led cooking and storytelling.

India has perhaps the richest canvas: Kerala homestays centred on Ammamma-led cuisine; Tamil Nadu experiences with Paati around kolam and traditional food; Bengal's seasonal cooking with Dida or Thakuma; Rajasthan's textile traditions; and Northeast India's indigenous food, crafts and oral histories shared by community elders.

Hotels could create community-table dinners. DMCs could develop living-history walks. Tour operators could build culinary trails around family recipes rather than restaurants. Cruise companies could invite local elders to share stories connected to the river, port, or landscape.

The opportunity lies in turning local knowledge into meaningful encounters without turning the people who hold that knowledge into attractions.

That distinction matters. Participation should be voluntary, respectful, and fairly compensated. The objective is not to manufacture authenticity, but to give genuine community knowledge a place in contemporary tourism.

WHAT TRAVELLERS ARE REALLY SEEKING

Perhaps the appeal of nonnamaxxing is ultimately quite simple. Travellers are surrounded by information but increasingly short of context. They can know everything about a destination before arriving and still know very little about how people actually live there.

A grandmother can change that in an afternoon.

She can tell you which food belongs to which season, why a street has its name, which festival mattered when she was young or how a recipe survived when circumstances changed. These details rarely appear in an itinerary, but they are often what makes a place memorable.

And that is where SLOW IS THE NEW SPEED becomes more than a travel slogan. It becomes a way of deciding what is worth our time.

THE GRANDMOTHER EFFECT

Technology will continue to make travel faster. AI will plan routes, apps will translate menus and algorithms will recommend places before we have even asked.

That is progress. But travel needs something else too.

It needs time for the conversation that was not on the itinerary. The meal that took longer than expected. The neighbourhood detour. The story that began with “When I was young...” and somehow lasted an hour.

Perhaps that is why Grandma has suddenly become such an interesting figure in travel.

Not because she represents a romanticised past, but because she carries something the future cannot manufacture quite so easily: a lived relationship with place.

The world may call it nonnamaxxing.

Asia might simply call it spending time with Grandma.

And perhaps that is the most fitting lesson of all.

Travel farther if you must. But sometimes, go slower.

SLOW IS THE NEW SPEED.