Marketers Grapple With Outdated Perception Of Senior Living As Nursing Homes, Cruise Ships

In 2026, private-pay senior living communities are more country club than cruise ship, and they are very different from nursing homes. The problem is prospects don’t always know that.

Multiple stakeholders are competing to tell the story of how older adults should live their next chapter in life, from owners of 55-plus neighborhoods with for-sale homes on one end to managers of skilled nursing facilities on the other. Some baby boomers also recall when they were the adult children shopping for their parents’ senior housing just a couple decades earlier.

As a result, prospects sometimes have outdated perceptions of the industry and don’t always understand what modern senior living is or what kind of care they or their loved ones need. Anecdotal data from senior living sales teams at operators Jaybird Senior Living and Heritage Communities show that many prospects still think of senior living as nursing homes and other high-acuity settings. And oftentimes, their first question is not about services, amenities or quality of life, it’s about cost.

“If we still have people out there who are calling us for nursing home services and thinking that’s what we are, then maybe we all need to do something different,” said Jaybird Senior Living SVP of Sales and Marketing Christy Van Der Westhuizen during the recent Senior Housing News Sales and Marketing conference in Orlando.

Jaybird, Heritage and other senior living operators such as Maplewood Senior Living all believe that the industry must show residents the difference that senior living can offer, and can show that difference through marketing that is authentic, not necessarily perfect.

Senior living operators should show their communities are not merely cruise ships on land – and certainly not a “last chapter,” said Heritage Communities Chief Marketing Officer Lacy Jungman.

Show the difference

Senior living operators have spent years advertising the lifestyle that residents can live in their communities. Unfortunately for them, some prospects didn’t get the memo and still think of senior living as the nursing home, a fact that Van Der Westhuizen said left her a little heartbroken.

It’s clear the industry has more work to do to educate them on the difference, she said. But operators just can’t tell prospects that they are different from nursing homes or master-planned communities. Instead, they must actually show them.

“Show with pictures, show with video, show with experiences and really talk about how we are extremely different than potentially the perception out there,” Van Der Westhuizen said. “The more we tell stories and allow residents to shout out their stories to a much larger public, the better.”

The good news is that the senior living industry has kept up with what its customers want in terms of community design, amenities and services, said Maplewood Vice President of Marketing Jenna Anderson. It’s the overall story of senior living that hasn’t kept pace with the times. In other words, many senior living communities already offer the kind of life boomers want, and it’s up to operators to show them.

“They want choice, they want autonomy, they want all of those things. A lot of our communities are there,” she said. “It’s not about a product gap, it’s about a gap in how we tell the story. And I think that’s something for us all to look at – how are we telling the story and how are we getting the messaging out to this new generation?”

Unlike cruise ships, which sell temporary stays and packages of services, usually bundled together; senior living operators are more akin to country clubs, where residents are part of an exclusive, larger community that they continually choose to be part of.

“It’s a lifestyle, and it’s a culture versus day-to-day activity,” Jungman said. “If we want to really capture the next generation, we have to figure out how to make sense of where they belong, how they give back, how they use the skills and experience they’ve honed over decades and decades.”

Jungman sees an opportunity to get in front of senior living “influencers” that prospects and their families trust. That is a role that senior living operators could play, but only if they think far outside the box.

“Demand is [made up of] the people who are ready to go right now. But what about the top of the funnel? How do we hit those people who don’t even have the awareness, but they actually do need to have the awareness?” she said.

To that end, Heritage is shifting its marketing strategy to embrace “influencer-style social media storytelling” that lets prospects and their loved ones glimpse the reality of senior living before ever reaching a “crisis moment,” she said.

Jaybird is taking a similar approach by showcasing community “vibes” to prospective residents in videos, testimonials and photos, according to Van Der Westhuizen.

“That’s I think the future of senior living, especially social media marketing,” she said. “It involves purposeful, meaningful things – still doing what you love, but it’s capturing that and giving that to a greater audience.”

Tell a new story

One of the industry’s longstanding problems is that many prospects think of senior living communities as places of last resort and therefore only reach out after a major health event, like a fall. But people in all walks of life spend time planning for multiple other life milestones, from weddings and graduations to retirement and having a child.

Jungman thinks the senior living industry can show prospects that moving into a senior housing community is also a life event worth planning for.

“If we could rewrite the entire story for senior living, I would want it to be one that is about choice, one that is pre-planned, one that is so exciting for them that they can’t wait for that next step,” she said during a panel at the conference. “It’s not riddled with guilt, distraught feelings or emotional turmoil, it’s met with ‘Okay, I know what’s next – and what’s next is not a bad thing.”

Anderson added: “If we can get in front of these individuals earlier and really impart upon them what our Senior Living looks like now … we can really change the pattern of when and how they’re moving in.”

“We need to get ahead of that and try to disrupt that timeline, tell our story and get those residents to see us differently,” she said.

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