The travel industry is constantly changing and as travellers, try to keep up with it yet influence it at the same time. A new decade is bound to bring with a myriad of changes and it seems that they are already here. Planning your trips for 2020, there are a few of this year’s travel trends to keep in mind.
Last year, it was all about chasing the night skies (think Northern Lights in
Studying the research of some of the globe’s most influential travel sites (Forbes, Independent UK, Conde Nast Traveller, National Geographic and Booking.com) here are some of the top travel trends for 2020.
Ancestry Travel
Remember those home DNA test kits that found popularity in 2019? They were such a hit that now, they have caused a global phenomenon with millions of people looking into their roots. As Conde Nast Traveller explains in its 2020 travel trends piece, 26 million people had taken an ancestry test by the start of 2019, as the MIT Technology Review revealed.
Ancestral tourism is a thing and more people are expected to go on voyages to find links connected to their ancestors and cultures.
Sources:
Pet-cations
Taking pets on holidays and selecting accommodations that are pet-friendly is a growing wonder as
Sources:
Choosing low-season
Travelling during the off-peak season might not be entirely new, yet as popular destinations reach maximum capacity and tourists are more and more obsessed with
Sources:
The rise of second-city travel
Coming in hand-in-hand with over-tourism, opting to go to slightly lesser-known destinations will see a rise in 2020. Leaving the crowds behind in Venice and Machu Pichu, more travellers will seek second-city travel, meaning hidden destinations with fewer crowds and more original experiences.
54% of world travellers want to help reduce over-tourism and 60% would be interested in a service that highlights destinations where tourism would positively affect local communities, according to Booking.com. We expect that it won’t be long until companies pick up on this and we’re excited to find even more destinations to discover!
Sources:
All aboard the train
With the same mindset of reducing impact is the influx of conscious travellers choosing to travel by train rather than an airplane to reduce their carbon footprint, inspired by Greta Thunberg. This might not be feasible for everyone if they don’t border other countries, but exciting train journeys like the
Sources:
Travel sustainably
Ditching plane rides aren’t the only thing frequent travellers have begun doing. As the world’s first black woman to travel to all of the countries of the globe, Jessica Nabongo, exclusively told us in
It’s all about fighting single-use plastics. Saying no to hotel freebies and bringing your own are two simple ways to go about it. Companies have picked up on this trend too by offering eco-friendly products and electrical cars. Some airlines have even started marking which flights emit less CO2.
Flying emission-free may seem impossible, but is it? Rolls-Royce is planning to test an electric plane in 2020 and more companies are following in their footsteps. Airbus’s electric E-Fan X aircraft is scheduled for take-off in 2021 while Israel’s Eviation plans to realise its commercial electric plane Alice in 2022, as
Sources:
Micro-holidays
Forget about long-haul flights and going away for weeks at a time. As the time-deprived working millennials enter the travel sector fiercely, short-term vacations are picking up. Today’s travellers would rather have a 3-4 days holiday if that means travelling more often, rather than spending 14 days of their working holidays to go to Peru. And it’s not just about saving money. Micro-vacations are popular because collecting experiences and getting away often is what travel is about these days.
It’s all about seeing more, travelling closer to home (thus avoiding jetlag) and blending travel into a working week.
Sources: