Travel runs on trends in the same way fashion does: where people go, what they do once they are there, and which photograph will cause the most quiet resentment on a feed. What has shifted this year is the organising principle. The trips being booked now are built around a feeling rather than a list of places to tick off.
Peak season has stopped feeling like a prize
Somewhere along the line the premium stopped being worth it. Traffic that does not move in the Hamptons, hotel rates on Lake Como that read as typos, shop owners on Nantucket openly asking influencers to stop filming inside their businesses. The romance has thinned, and the shoulder season has quietly become the better trip.
The coolcation
With summers getting hotter and less predictable, going somewhere deliberately cold has become its own category. Iceland has had this audience for a while, whether that means design led countryside hotels such as Eleven Deplar Farm or the Reykjavik EDITION in town.
Wellness as a group activity
The wellness club boom, Remedy Place and Othership and The Well among them, is expanding again with a Tribeca opening this autumn called Schwet drawing on Eastern European bathing culture. Communal bathing is ancient, so the newness is overstated.
What has actually changed is that serious hotels are investing in the social version of it. The Sofitel Singapore Sentosa now runs communal rituals and turns its pool into an outdoor cinema, while Janu Tokyo, the Aman offshoot, programmes group aerial yoga and sound baths.
The road trip, reconsidered
The American road trip is having an unlikely stylish revival, helped by the fact that electric vehicles and charging networks have finally made long distances easy. The cultural half matters more: people want to slow down and stop somewhere that is not already famous.
Genuinely off grid
Against a background of email and group chats, the most luxurious thing available is somewhere with no signal. The maximal version is an Alaskan lodge such as Ultima Thule or its new sister property, Great Saint Elias Station.
Astrotourism
Astrology is everywhere and the market for dark skies is now measured in billions. Under Canvas has pursued DarkSky certification across many of its camps, adding stargazer tents, guided sessions, star bathing meditations and, inevitably, celestial cocktails.
The supermarket souvenir
The status object leaving Paris Fashion Week lately has not been a bag or a coat but a vacuum sealed block of cultured butter from La Grande Epicerie. Seasoned travellers have always known the grocery store is the most enjoyable shop in any city.
Cruising, but not as it was
The category has shed its reputation, largely because luxury hotel groups have moved into it. The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection and Four Seasons Yachts are building floating design hotels rather than floating buffets.
Safaris that ask something of you
The most sought after safaris now involve doing rather than watching. At Segera in Kenya guests can harvest honey, tour an art collection of museum standard, and meet the anti poaching teams protecting the rhino population. Boutique horseback operators are spreading across the same region.