Trends tips

Travel brands have increasingly looked to use emerging technology in their operations, especially generative artificial intelligence. What are major trends in travel technology? We put the question to Ask Skift, our artificial intelligence chatbot. It used information appearing in both our past news coverage and Skift Research. We also conducted additional reporting.

Looking ahead to 2024, luxury tailor-made travel experts Cazenove+Loyd has identified seven key ways in which we are likely to travel next year and beyond. Working in collaboration with Globetrender, a leading travel trend forecasting agency, the report, entitled ‘Travelling with Purpose: Milestone Motivations’,looks beyond demographics to focus on psychographics, categorising common life events that are the prompts for why many of us travel.

Travellers from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) plan to increase their spending on breaks and holidays over the next three years and will have more of an eye on sustainability than ever before. In fact, most now check the sustainability of their travel plans, and are prepared to pay over 20% more for environmentally-friendly accommodation.

The book defines and provides a systematic classification scheme for sustainable development trends and issues in the public and private sectors reviewing them in four thematic areas on tourism, such as: Sustainability / Planning and Development / Management / Technology.

Amadeus unveils annual trends exploring what travelers expect in the year ahead.  Influencers become agents, business class fares unbundle, artificial intelligence matures, and musical tourism drives demand, while eVTOLs prepare for take-off.

This most interesting and timely book illuminates the complex destination of Europe and its need to adopt new structural approaches to tourism policy.

In this series of articles, I talk to a wide range of travel experts, insiders and luxury brands to find out more about the future of travel for next year and beyond. In Part 1, I wrote about the search for authentic travel and how technology can elevate travel experiences. For Part 2, I spoke to Black Tomato about the rise in people wanting to capture special moments through travel experiences. Today, I take a deep dive into the rise of sustainable architecture, the trend of happy hotel design and the quest for the best of sleep science.

Having witnessed a surge in demand for group travel over the past couple of years, Black Tomato–renowned for its imaginative and boundary-pushing experiential travel–has taken this as inspiration for its latest offering. It’s in step with a rising trend of travelers wanting to travel together and reconnect–particularly post-pandemic–with family members and groups of friends.

Demand for unique experiences is an unstoppable trend that will continue to shape how travel businesses operate and engage with their customers in 2024 and beyond.

In this series of articles, I talk to a wide range of travel experts, insiders and luxury brands to find out more about the future of travel for next year and beyond. Today, I look at two growing trends: the search for authentic travel and how technology can elevate travel experiences.

As the year nears its end, the tourism industry is setting its sights on the buzzwords for travel in 2024. Will we still be doing revenge travel, set-jetting and workcations?

Before the pandemic, Trip.com Group offered an “Around the World” package that was priced at a staggering $250,000. It was an instant sensation, and sold out in a mere 17 seconds.

The way we travel is constantly changing.

You will encounter unexpected aspects of life and culture when you visit the Italian island of Sicily. These may include discovering that pockets of locals are fiercely averse to wearing seat belts; that train cars are regularly loaded onto a ferry boat that crosses the Straits of Messina; that other ricotta-based desserts can truly compete with cannoli; that red bluefin tuna caught off the coast are so deliciously valuable that most are exported to Japan; that the island historically lacks a culture of rosé wine production, and that the Sicilian wine scene is so dynamic that grapes you likely never heard have become the latest highlights.

A new trends report by Hilton predicts that the main driver for travelers of all generations to enjoy leisure trips in 2024 will be a desire to rest and relax. 

Welcome back to another episode of the TravelPulse Podcast! 

According to a recent global survey conducted by Hilton and Ipsos, travelers say they will reduce other areas of personal spending to prioritize leisure travel in 2024, with a majority across generations indicating their No. 1 reason to travel in 2024 will be to rest and recharge, with more emphasis on sleep than ever before. Those insights and more were unveiled today with the launch of Hilton’s third-annual trends report: “What Millennials, Gen Z, Gen X and Baby Boomers Tell Us About Travel in the Year Ahead.” In addition to defining the preferences and passions of the 2024 traveler, the report takes a deeper look at how each generation views travel – from the digital-native Gen Zer to the experienced Baby Boomer. 

Hilton on Thursday released its annual whitepaper on consumer travel trends. (Find it here.) The hotel giant is typically quite savvy about how it uses such reports to garner “earned media” coverage for its brands.

Ahead of the Arival 360 Conference in Orlando on October 9-12, travel leaders have shared the top three tours, activities and experiences trends they expect will shape the travel industry in 2024.

Amid the experience sector’s digital transformation, a notable trend is emerging: the importance of direct bookings, with smaller tour operators looking to capitalize on the next wave for experience travel businesses.

This August, 55,769 tourists arrived in the city by air. During the eight previous months, this figure came to 459,590, some 122,499 visitors more than in the same period the previous year.