Top Travel Trends For 2025
In 2024, new technologies, and in particular AI, became a part of travel planning. Luxury trains were a big thing and wellness sojourns were all the rage. But what do we have in store for 2025 when it comes to traveling?
Literary Inspiration
A big theme for 2025 is literature. Whether celebrities, influencers, or TikTokers, everyone traveling seems to be clutching a book. And it’s not just last-minute paperbacks from an airport kiosk to pass the time on an eight-hour flight.
Literary Inspiration
Increasingly, travelers are finding motivation from books to try new travel destinations. Whether at book festivals and fairs, following the paths of writers and fictional characters, or taking a deep dive into the history of a particular region, reading and travel go hand and hand. As we become more disconnected from the tangible, travelers are being inspired by literature to add depth to their journeys.
Destination Dining
Increasingly, restaurants are attracting customers not just for their menus but for novel ways and locations to present their food. Whether using unusual ingredients, out-of-the-way locations, or eccentric settings, restaurants are constantly searching for new ways to present their fare without sacrificing quality.
Destination Dining
Exotic locations are all the rage—guests travel to Kenya to sample the menus of top chefs at the foot of Mount Kenya. Likewise, trips to Australia’s Outback to dine al fresco under the endless expanse of the night sky near Uluru (also known as Ayers Rock) are becoming more popular. And how about dining in a glass tunnel five meters underwater? These are the sorts of dining and travel experiences increasingly available to the adventurous traveler.
Accessible Travel
Accessibility is crucial for any industry and travel is no exception. The main issue with travel and accessibility is the difference in standards, culture, and local regulations. Even when there is a push for accessibility, sites are often inaccessible due to age or location.
Accessible Travel
What is happening now is a drive for adventure travel for disabled travelers. With adaptive equipment and inclusive tour operators, the trend now is to be open to all travelers. In 2025, there is going to be an increase in focus, with the spending power of the disabled growing to $13 trillion overall.
The Extended Honeymoon
With more people working remotely and with flexible schedules, there’s opportunity to stay longer at travel destinations. The idea of the honeymoon—a weekend, or maybe a week, on a sunny beach somewhere—has shifted to the idea of longer honeymoons that amount to a residency rather than a quick stop.
Focusing On Women Travelers
Although travel focused on women and their experiences is nothing new, more and more cultural spaces are expanding their reach to women travelers. It’s long been felt that the tourism industry has focused mainly on traveling couples or families and when they do cater to women, it’s for groups of women traveling to resorts. What about other kinds of travel, such as going to museums?
Focusing On Women Travelers
Many destinations are digging deep into their local history and finding stories that may have been overlooked, fresh perspectives that emphasize the female gaze. Whether solo female travel or education-centered family trips, travel focusing on women’s achievements is becoming big business. From literary tours focusing on women writers to museums expanding their scope to include important women of history and women artists, the notion of the grand tour of old masters has expanded.
Women And Adventure Travel
While cultural and historical locales are finding new ways to attract women, the adventure travel market is hoping to capitalize on the mobility and financial freedom of women travelers. Although women have always been among the historic adventure travelers, let’s face it—adventure travel has tended to cater to men.
Women And Adventure Travel
Half of all travelers who seek adventure destinations are women. This is a growth trend and in 2025, women will be looking for destinations that prioritize inclusivity and safety, including women-only tours. This can only mean steady growth for adventure tourism, and it would be foolish to ignore this potential.
Athletic Adventures
A subset of adventure traveling, sports-focused travel will be big in 2025. Athletic adventures are at the forefront of a movement to not only watch sports but to take part in sports while traveling. This coincides with a 50% increase in searches for “workout holidays”, emphasizing fitness and health while traveling.
Athletic Adventures
Various sports are now being utilized to attract the sports-minded traveler. At one time, sports traveling meant planning a vacation around the World Cup or the Superbowl, and while that still applies, participatory sports are increasingly a draw. Resorts now include location-specific sports, often at a high level of skill, while opportunities to work out in state-of-the-art gyms are an increasing must-have for any resort, cruise ship, or hotel.
Holistic Travel
With health being a focus of many travelers, different approaches to wellness are being offered. Wellness resorts will increase in number, offering community along with relaxation and health. Increasingly, an obsession with longevity, both in terms of years and of quality of life, is more important than ever.
Holistic Travel
Holistic approaches to health will be significant in the travel industry in 2025. Although vacations focused on alternative medicine and health are popular, what is increasingly important is community, with group retreats and opportunities to meet new people while regenerating the body and soul.
Rural Skills And Immersive Travel
While we seek to get away from it all, sometimes it’s difficult to truly get away when surrounded by modern amenities. Rural upskilling, working farms, and connecting with ancestral roots have become a growing subset of the travel industry.
Rural Skills And Immersive Travel
Learning traditional skills and crafts while living simply in a pre-industrial setting may be just what’s needed for jaded and burnt-out travelers. The travel industry is meeting those challenges while exposing visitors to overlooked areas off the beaten path. Rural getaways with instructional activities and limited modern conveniences are something that will be big in 2025.
Hotel Collaborations
Hotels are generally places to stay while you get to know the area. Some hotels are the destination, particularly at tropical resorts, but increasingly, hotels are offering themes and services outside the norm, focusing on local customs and products as collaborations between the hotel and artisans become a crucial area of growth.
Hotel Collaborations
Collaborations between hotels and other businesses can provide sensory experiences, tastes of the local right at your doorstep, and creative infusions of local color. Emphasizing what is unique to the area, hotel collaborations can bring art and culture to the hotel guests while giving them a taste of what they will find while wandering through the area.
Taking Detours
Traveling solo, without an itinerary or package deal, has its advantages and the most important advantage is the flexibility to take detours. Why follow the chartered path with thousands of others when you can wander down a side street and find something new?
Taking Detours
Detour travel is the idea that wandering, getting off the beaten path and away from tourist traps, can be the most rewarding form of travel. Although not a formal part of the industry (that would defeat the purpose), travelers are increasingly becoming aware of the joys of detours, discovering an authentic restaurant frequented only by locals, or finding a quiet spot where the tour buses don’t go.
Family Sabbatical
Most of us can’t take off and not come back, no matter how tempting that may be. We have responsibilities and family commitments, but the sabbatical—a longer getaway that is neither a vacation nor a working holiday—is something few people outside academia get to do. Taking months off from your regular routine could be just the transformative experience you need.
Family Sabbatical
But how do you do it? Increasingly, companies building sabbaticals into the work contract is becoming common, allowing employees extended time away to come back renewed and with increased mental well-being, something forward-thinking companies are striving for. With children off for two months in the summer, extended family getaways bring education and relaxation into focus for the whole family.
New Trends For Wine Tourism
Of course, wine tours are nothing new. Many oenophiles schedule their annual vacations around trips to wine regions. With Bordeaux, Tuscany, or Napa Valley the usual destinations for the wine aficionado, increasingly, the discovery of lesser-known wine regions has become popular.
New Trends For Wine Tourism
The term “overtourism”—to describe areas saturated with tourists—has become a buzzword in the industry and wine tours more than most. What wine fans want now are new discoveries, new methods, and new makers. And while the big names will always be popular, focusing on the less-traveled wine path has its rewards.
Self-Service And Informality
The idea of being self-sufficient while traveling isn’t new. The trend in the past 20 years or so has been for homestays like Airbnb, living like a local, cooking your food, and avoiding living like a tourist in hotels. For 2025, autonomy and informality will be strong factors in hospitality.
Self-Service And Informality
Even in hotels proper, self check-ins are becoming increasingly common, and not just from hotels trying to save money on wages. Hotels are making rooms more homey, creating relaxing atmospheres with little staff interaction. This may not be for everyone—many will still want to be pampered on vacation—but informality is also going to be a big thing in the coming year.
Cruise Nightlife
While the cruise industry has been expanding its services so that anything a traveler could want would be found on-board, conversely, flexibility and expanded on-shore leave have also become important. It seems travelers want it all—full amenities on the ship, and the freedom to embark on adventures in port.
Cruise Nightlife
With the rise in exotic and remote locales for cruise ship destinations, the desire for longer stays on land has also grown. Cruise lines are offering longer stays on shore, not just dinner and a show, but extended stays for a few nights while the ship waits for you. This is a boon for local economies as passengers explore beyond the seaside bars and restaurants, and get to experience more travel experiences by not staying on board.
Locavore Lounges
A real growth industry is happening in the airports themselves. We are all used to the basics at airports during layovers—even first-class lounges tend to be limited in amenities. Travelers are now expecting, and finding, airport lounges to include sleep pods, showers, yoga and spa facilities, full-service restaurants, and even art collections and unlimited champagne
Locavore Lounges
This isn’t something most travelers can expect but there is also a trend towards providing tastes of the local while passengers wait for their flights. Menus and drink lists reflect the area, and passengers can find themselves treated to bakeries, delis, destination-themed bento boxes, and samples of locally sourced libations.
Off-board Experiences
While cruises are offering extended shore leaves to allow passengers extra time to explore the local port of call, the train industry is likewise providing extended off-board excursions. The draw for train travel is the ease and slower pace. You don’t take a train across a continent because you’re in a hurry to get to the final stop.
Off-board Experiences
If you’re already in the mindset to meander, trains are now accommodating that style of travel by building stops into the itineraries for short excursions. Train travel is expected to experience growth as travelers desire a more relaxed trip. Who wants to fly for eight hours only to jump on another plane one day later?
The Joy Of Missing Out
The fear of missing out—FOMO—has been a driving force of much travel over the past several years. Travelers wanted to experience everything and the idea of not being somewhere for a particular once-in-a-lifetime experience was agonizing. What’s increasingly becoming important is the flipside to FOMO: the joy of missing out (JOMO).
The Joy Of Missing Out
The Italian phrase la dolce far niente, the “sweetness of doing nothing”, is a mindset or philosophy where trends, keeping up with others, and hyperconnectivity are discarded for living in the moment. The joy of missing out is an outlook that allows travelers relief from chasing trends. Life is hectic enough and sometimes not bothering with taking part in a big event or exciting experience—missing out—can be rewarding in and of itself.
Night Tourism
With tourism at its logical peak in overtouristed areas, and with climate change making daytime traveling in certain areas unpleasant, an emphasis on night tourism is a growing trend. Avoiding the crowds and the heat, travelers can have the same experiences but with the added allure of being out at night, exploring key destinations without the crowds. If you can’t travel off-season, focusing on seeing things at night is perhaps even better.
Astrocartography
Here’s an interesting trend, particularly if you’re into horoscopes. Have you ever felt a deep connection with a place as soon as you arrived for the first time? Do other places somehow feel “off” to you?
Astrocartography
A subsection of astrology suggests that our birth charts, when compared to a map, impact your experiences when traveling. Where a planet was at the exact time and place of your birth suggests a connection to certain locations and a disconnect with others. Pioneered in 1978 by American astrologer Jim Lewis, astrocartography emerged in 2025 as a method for choosing travel destinations.
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