Plan an escape to Europe or beyond starting at less than $500 thanks to this KLM Royal Dutch Airlines fall and winter sale.
06.09.2024 - 20:05 / skift.com / Jesse ChaseLubitz
“Experiences” are becoming a growth engine for the travel sector. An expanding segment of travelers are demanding immersive, cultural interactions at destinations as an alternative to checklist visits of famous sights.
The tours and activities sector was valued at $239 billion in 2019 and is forecast to hit nearly $300 billion by 2025.
“The biggest trend that affects all of travel — so hotels, destinations, transportation — is the rise of experiences as the driver of the trip,” said Douglas Quinby, the co-founder and CEO of Arival, an events and research business.
“This is especially noticeable among millennials, which is the largest segment of the traveling population right now,” Quinby said.
As experiences boom, executives told Skift they’re watching five key themes emerge. The sector faces consolidation pressures, but fragmentation and specialization provide opportunities. Demographic targeting is on the rise. AI and climate change loom as disruptive forces.
Deal-making is surging as firms seek scale and nimbler reservation capabilities. This trend could squeeze smaller operators.
Across the travel industry, mergers and acquisitions have been picking up since the pandemic, according to a travel deal tracker by investment firm Cambon Partners and travel research company Videc.
The travel experiences segment hasn’t been immune to the consolidation trend. In just the past five months, GetYourGuide partnered with airline Eurowings, the private equity firm Apollo Global Management acquired The Travel Corporation, Trip.com and Prioticket came together on a deal, and Lastminute.com and TUI joined up.
One of the primary drivers is booking. Quinby said that at least half of the operators do not use a booking system. “This creates all sorts of problems for travelers and for resellers.”
Partnerships can help smaller operators get their businesses noticed and their offerings booked.
“Operators are facing uncertainty in their marketing effectiveness as paid ads Google and Meta] become more expensive and less effective at targeting, and organic SEO is getting harder to compete in with the advent of AI-powered results,” said Mitch Bach, the co-founder of Tourpreneur, a community and resource hub for small and independent tour operators.
“They’re feeling the squeeze and developing B2B partnerships as a workaround,” Bach said.
Consolidation of booking systems — the BookingKits, Palisises, and Peeks of the world — is a specific trend to watch.
“Operators now have almost too many choices among many great, competitive systems,” Quinby said. “The future will belong to platforms that provide enhanced services – marketing, pricing, product design, customer service, and other parts of the next wave of innovation.”
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Plan an escape to Europe or beyond starting at less than $500 thanks to this KLM Royal Dutch Airlines fall and winter sale.
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Koji, the mold that transforms soy beans and wheat into soy sauce and rice into sake, is so beloved in Japan that it has its own holiday. And lately, chefs have been finding new uses for the fungus, which has a fruity aroma and an ability to make “anything it touches better,” says Jeremy Umansky, 41, the owner of Larder deli in Cleveland. He uses koji for almost everything: to cure pastrami; to ferment Chinese-style black beans, which are ground and swirled into chocolate babka to embolden the chocolate; and to sprinkle over salads and fries in the form of what the restaurant calls Special K, a seasoning of dried ground koji. “It’s a harmonizer,” he says. Bartenders, too, are taking note. At Nancy’s Hustle in Houston, the bar manager, Zach Hornberger, 32, adds it to the nonalcoholic Silver Brining cocktail, a sweet-sour-salty mix of pickle brine, grapefruit and lime juices, koji and tonic. “It brings this umami background to beverages, and it plays well with citrus, taming the high acid notes and rounding the drink as a whole,” he says. At the restaurant Fête in Honolulu, the bar manager, Fabrice McCarthy, 41, infuses rum with shio koji (a slurry of koji, water and salt) and shakes it into a mai tai to add salinity — the effect, he says, is similar to how salted peanuts make you want to drink more beer. Ryan Chetiyawardana, 40, the owner of the bar Lyaness in London, experiments with koji in multiple forms — for one cocktail, he ferments parsnips with koji, which he says unlocks the sweetness and delivers “a huge tropical brightness.” While koji often plays a supporting role, at Paradiso in Barcelona, it wraps around the entire lip of the glass used for the Fleming, named for Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, another influential mold. For this fungus-inspired cocktail, which includes grapefruit, tequila and miso, the manager of Paradiso’s research lab, Matteo Ciarpaglini, 30, one-upped a classic salt rim with a fluffy cloud of koji, its floral fragrance accompanying every taste. —
I've always used points and miles as a tool to enjoy travel experiences that I could typically never otherwise afford to purchase. Over time, this has often meant maximizing my rewards to book first-class flights and fancy hotel rooms. But aside from staying in Waldorf Astoria hotels and booking first-class flights on Japan Airlines' newest A350-1000 aircraft, your points can also be used to book special events and exclusive experiences.
Still deciding on whether to attend the top global travel industry event of the year, Skift Global Forum, on September 17-19 but want to know what all will be discussed? We used AskSkift to ask “what are the top 5 key themes often covered at Skift Global Forum over the last 10 years?” Here are the results: