During the meeting, our Council identified a number of emerging travel trends to watch that include:
- Wellness & “Fit-cations” – stays at wellness retreats are growing longer, and “Healing Hotels” are including an education component to their services. New services offered include a focus on Mental Wellness, IV doctors (immune accelerators), and oxygen services, such as the oxygen bar at The Sonnenalp Hotel.
- Hyper specialized hotels – Properties that are highly focused on specific travelers or interests, such as family or activities like surfing, hiking, yoga and spinning.
- Maker Culture – Travelers want to try things for the first time, such as building, painting, sewing – creating something themselves. It’s not about where you’re going but what you’re making when you get there.
- Frontierism – The excitement of getting there first. It’s about exclusivity and pushing boundaries. The quest for the unique in a global, connected world.
- Personal Transformation – For many travelers, the days of the boozy lunch vacation are over. Instead, advisors are seeing their clients on a quest to be active, to learn, enrich and invest in themselves through the destinations, accommodations and activities they choose.
Opportunities in the New Media Landscape
One of the informational sessions focused on opportunities in the new media landscape and covered the do’s and don’ts of partnering with the media. There are many more opportunities for travel providers and advisors to be a part of the creation of stories these days, serving as resources and experts. But how can you partner with the media? Some of the suggestions for building successful media relationships were to take advantage of tradeshows to network, to connect with media via social media, to host stays and to speak up when conflicts arise in destinations. In addition, you should expand your focus beyond just a few publications, and in fact beyond print. There are many smaller online and local media that have targeted audiences worth reaching, and online coverage has a larger distribution, longer shelf life and is easier to share across social media channels.
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