It sounds like the start of an episode of Black Mirror. The consumer DNA testing company 23andMe announced it was “teaming up” with Airbnb to connect customers with their heritage: by helping them go on holiday to where their ancestors may have lived.

Big Data, it seems, can put you back in touch with your roots.

The premise is simple enough. You give a saliva sample to 23andMe, which performs the testing. Large numbers of genetic markers are compared with a reference population, a genetic yardstick derived from public data sets and 23andMe’s own data.

23andMe sends you the results, which indicate where your forebears may have hailed from, and a link to Airbnbs in those regions. You make the trip and feel a connection to kin who once pitched tents or watered horses on the same spot.

Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe’s chief executive, says the tie-up will create opportunities for “deeply personal cultural and travel experiences”. For those unwilling to travel long distances, Airbnb suggests trying one of its local “Experiences” — a Chinese calligraphy class in San Francisco, for example.

Ancestry tourism is on the rise, fuelled by £100 (S$174) DNA tests and a plethora of genealogy websites.

A study of 8,000 people commissioned by Airbnb found that more than half of American respondents had travelled to a country with which they had an ancestral connection. Airbnb says it has seen a 500 per cent increase in ancestry tourism since 2014.

23andMe and Airbnb aren’t the first in the game. Ancestry.com partnered with Go Ahead Tours in 2017, running ancestry-based holidays for a primarily North American audience.

Their 10- to 14-day trips to Ireland, Scotland, Italy and Germany cost about US$3,500 (S$4,782) to US$4,000.

Packages include a pre-trip family history review, visits to tourist hotspots, accommodation and meals, and a genealogist to offer insights into heritage throughout the trip. Pay extra, and you get a customised visit to the place your ancestors apparently lived, supported by genealogical research.

At a time when nationalists are winning elections around the world, it is easy to lose sight of the common human thread in our double helix. If ancestry tourism can combat that trend and encourage learning about new cultures, then that’s a positive outcome.

The risk that returning holiday makers will bore their friends with interminable talk of “deep cultural affinities” is a potential downside.

For would-be ancestry tourists, however, there are some significant caveats. Genetic tests are inevitably estimates based on databases and algorithms. As such, there’s a chance of forging a link to a country from which you have no ancestors.

Because most genetic testing to date has been carried out on people of European descent, people with a different heritage may also receive less specific results (23andMe says it is committed to improving this).

To complicate matters further, as databases grow, the results are likely to change.

When you first get back your test, it might say you’re 25 per cent southern Italian. After booking a trip to Sardinia, you discover that’s dropped to just 5 per cent. Because competing companies use different data and methodologies, percentages can also vary between them.

Tracing ancestry may seem banal when compared with the other side of home genetics testing: health. For many people, learning about their ancestry is a fascinating experience, but it’s important to accept that test kits have limitations.

People should also beware of pigeonholing themselves on the basis of their DNA. Travelling to Spain solely on the basis of your genes may broaden your mind — or it may amount to partial reading of identity.

If you do take up ancestry tourism, try not to get too emotional on your return to the motherland. Better to recognise that everyone’s DNA is inextricably intertwined than to convince yourself that the test proves how special you are. FINANCIAL TIMES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Sid Venkataramakrishnan is a Financial Times leader writer.