Coolcations, culinary excavators and tour tourism are a few of the trends travel experts are predicting we’ll see in 2024. Booking.com and Expedia Group have released their annual round-ups of how they expect people will holiday and explore in the near future, noting that global crisis increased cost-of-living and climate change will play a major role in that.
“Where in years past, travel has been a means to escape life, […] research […] shows that travel is life in 2024, with more than three quarters (78%) revealing that they feel more alive than ever when they are on vacation,” reads a Booking.com press release. “[…] 68% also think they are the best version of themselves while on vacation.”
The booking platform’s trends research looked at over 27,000 travellers across 33 countries and territories, while Expedia Group’s travel trend data for this year, Unpack ’24, analysed travel data from its own sites Expedia, Wotif and Stayz, as well as 20,000 travellers.
Ahead, are six of the travel trend highlights from the two reports. You can read them in full at Expedia’s Unpack ’24 Trends in Travel and Booking.com Seven Travel Predictions for 2024.
Destination Dupes
Expedia dubbed the trend of travellers visiting more affordable alternatives to popular destinations ‘destination dupes’. The dupe destinations, it says, are places that are “a little unexpected, sometimes more affordable and every bit as delightful as the tried-and-true destinations travellers love”.
It lists some of the top dupe destinations being searched on its sites as:
- Taipei (dupe for Seoul)
- Pattaya (dupe for Bangkok)
- Paros (dupe for Santorini)
- Curaçao (dupe for St. Martin)
- Perth (dupe for Sydney)
- Liverpool (dupe for London)
- Palermo (dupe for Lisbon)
- Quebec City (dupe for Geneva)
- Sapporo (dupe for Zermatt)
- Memphis (dupe for Nashville)
Cool-cationers
Booking.com coined the term ‘cool-cationers’, which refers to travellers chasing cooler climate destinations, due to global rising temperatures. It found that 51% of those surveyed reported that climate change would impact the way they travel in 2024, while 56% said that as temperatures soared close to home, they would use their holiday-time to cool down elsewhere.
Tour Tourism
‘Tour tourism’ refers to travelling for a concert, which Expedia says its data showed happened with Taylor Swift’s Eras tour and Beyonce’s Renaissance tour this year. Mexico City, Kuala Lumpur and Edmonton were a few unexpected places on Expedia’s top tour tourism destination list.
“Over 60% of Australian survey respondents say they are likely to travel to a concert outside their own town, with over 40% saying they’d travel for a concert as an excuse to visit a new place,” reads the report.
Culinary Excavators
Booking.com found that nearly two-thirds of those surveyed (61%) said they were interested in learning about the origins of a destination’s must-eat delicacies than they were in the past.
“Culinary excavators are bucking next-gen food trends in favour of preserving the true craftsmanship of traditional dishes; leaning on gastro-tourism to embrace the unique history, geography and produce that makes for one-of-a-kind cuisine that will awaken the senses,” reads the report.
Mindful Aesthetes
Design and mindfulness are set to influence the way we travel in 2024, predicts Booking.com. The booking platform’s research says a growing number of hotels and other types of accommodations are presenting inventive and aesthetically pleasing responses to significant environmental and social challenges.
“These discerning travellers will hunt down jaw-dropping architecture that has environmental features at its heart, with over half (53%) looking for accommodation that has wow-factor sustainability innovation,” the report says. “Three in five (60%) want to see sustainability in action, while nearly two thirds (65%) want to see the outside brought indoors with green spaces and plants in accommodations on vacation.”
Regional Glow Ups
While the beauty industry may have coined the term ‘glow-up’, Expedia Group says it can applied to travel, too, with regional areas of Australia experiencing significant transformation in appearance and style and because of that, attracting more tourists. The group says its research found that almost 2 in 5 Aussies said travelling to new and different regional towns has increased in appeal over recent years. Examples of destinations hot on the radar of travellers include NSW towns Newcastle and Bellingen and Victoria’s Geelong and Lorne You can read our report on Newcastle’s glow-up here.
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