Again in 2020, we predicted the rise of the Revenge Traveler and the affect it will have on journey and hospitality expertise suppliers. As we strategy 2024, we’re recognizing a brand new kind of traveler on the horizon. And a set of developments that may problem among the methods you consider designing and delivering buyer experiences.
Submit-pandemic, individuals have a brand new stage of consciousness and a extra fast sense of what they want and need. That features a need to have actual, immersive shared experiences. Enter the Wholehearted Traveler. This new traveler sparks quite a lot of the journey developments coming our means within the new yr. Earlier than we dive into these, let’s get to know our new traveler’s motivations, expectations, and wishes. And what which means for the journey trade and expertise designers.
The Wholehearted Traveler
Vacationers in 2024 are looking for objective, that means, affect, and connection via journey. In consequence, they’re extra open to experiential journey relatively than the extra passive journey of the previous.
Submit-pandemic, we actually are touring wholeheartedly. We select locations, journey companions, and actions with objective. We’re demanding that means, affect and connection from each side of our journeys. These underlying motivations for journey reveal the wholehearted traveler’s journey means extra to them now. Journey is increased stakes when the standards for a visit goes past merely “getting away.”
This carries a bunch of alternatives for suppliers and expertise designers throughout the journey trade. But it surely additionally comes with an vital phrase of warning. As a result of the journey expertise is related to objective, the wholehearted traveler will probably be much less forgiving when the expertise fundamentals usually are not coated. That is increased stakes journey for our visitors. Additionally it is a better stakes recreation for these of us designing and delivering experiences for them.
On the latest Wall Road Journal The Way forward for Every part: The Way forward for Journey Pageant, the top of Turkish airways, Fatih Durmaz, captured the present spirit of vacationers nicely. He stated at this time’s traveler desires “to go farther, sooner, extra comfortably.” This speaks to the wholehearted traveler throughout generations. In our present second, the sense is, if I’m going to journey, I’m going to have the journey of a lifetime. That interprets to extra alternative – and extra duty – for human-centered, impactful experiences at each touchpoint of the journey.
Delivering on these expectations begins with understanding who we’re encountering at every journey stage. And the way their expectations are evolving within the coming yr. That brings us to the subsequent set of journey developments for 2024.
Household Journey – Expertise New Locations Collectively
Households are touring collectively extra. That is one other post-pandemic shift. Households who had been separated are looking for alternatives to attach and uncover new locations collectively. Moreover, households don’t dwell as shut to one another as they did years in the past. Journey permits households to come back collectively to get pleasure from shared experiences and set up new traditions.
Quite than one member of the family staying in place and others touring to fulfill them, households are beginning to meet in main cities/transportation hubs like Istanbul, New York Metropolis, and London.
On the supply facet, this implies we have to put together for teams touring throughout the journey (airways, everyone knows that group reservations are nonetheless on spreadsheets… time for a change?). However group journey just isn’t solely a logistical concern and enhancement alternative for airways. Take into consideration the affect of an increase in group journey on airports, automobile reservations, resort lodging, and actions reservations. And contemplate the composition of these teams and the various wants throughout personas inside households.
Multigenerational Journey is on the Rise
Leisure Group Journey Journal stories “greater than 20.8 million vacationers in america alone traveled on a multigenerational journey of three or extra generations.” With an ageing US inhabitants, that quantity is barely anticipated to develop. And that’s simply in america. We’re seeing the multigenerational household pattern throughout international journey.
Multigenerational journey represents an inflow in journey spending. But it surely additionally creates further ranges of complexity in designing and delivering customized, hospitality-driven experiences throughout journey touchpoints. It’s time to think twice about the right way to design on your visitors. Within the multigenerational context, you possibly can now not separate out personas and design discreet experiences for every persona segmentation. On this context, you might be tasked with designing for a persona that features the aged traveler and the Millennial traveler on the identical time, in the identical area.
We foresee an uptick in the usage of journey brokers to assist plan these multi-needs/multi-interest holidays. Be prepared to reply with worth. To the journey brokers and the vacation spot bundle designers, take this warning. Earlier than journey planners outsource you to ChatGPT, begin curating one thing particular. Construct itineraries with emotional cost. That is one thing ChatGPT can not do. And your market wants and desires it.
Lounge Expertise
When you have observed extra airport lounge bulletins and lounge experiences lately, you might be recognizing a high journey pattern for 2024 and past. Based on Globe Newswire, citing Analysis and Markets information, the “international airport lounge entry market is anticipated to generate USD 55.71 Billion by the top of 2028.” This marks a rise from 6.42B in 2022. This pattern one to observe for the journey and hospitality trade and ancillary way of life industries.
Bank card firms are creating airport lounges and curating airport lounge experiences as differentiators for his or her prospects. Bank cards, as way of life manufacturers, want to indicate up the place prospects dwell, journey to, and journey via. For that reason, bank card firms are making extra of a dedication to their prospects. In flip, they’re aiming for purchasers to make extra of a dedication to them via elevated utilization and better loyalty.
To compete for buyer acquisition and provides extra worth, bank card firms are providing experiences their prospects care about. With the rise of the wholehearted traveler, they acknowledge airport lounges are among the many excessive worth experiences at this time’s prospects crave.
Actually, airport lounges are a locus for the developments of the 2024 traveler. With the precise hospitality expertise design, hospitality requirements, and a well-trained employees, lounges are poised to fulfill the distinctive and evolving wants of the 2024 traveler and journey group.
Lounges elevate a elementary step on the journey journey and make attending to the vacation spot as experientially impactful as arrival on the vacation spot. That could be a key worth add for the wholehearted, experiential traveler of 2024. However it is just achievable when the lounge expertise itself is designed, managed, and maintained accurately.
To develop a vacation spot feeling for visitors, many airport lounges deal with infusing their expertise with distinctive native components. This could embrace native drinks, meals, artwork, and design. It’s just like modern airport design and buyer expertise greatest practices that infuse native choices to create a way of place for visitors, even those that are simply passing via.
Finally, this goes again to connection, that means, and objective of journey. And it leads us to our subsequent 2024 pattern.
Localization
Right this moment’s traveler craves authenticity. They need to do greater than get away from house. The 2024 traveler desires a actual sense of place by accessing regionally sourced meals, drink, items, and experiences. Our vacationers need an immersive expertise in one thing actual that’s totally different from what the encounter every day.
Journey reserving agency Get Your Information stories 90% of US vacationers title “experiencing a vacation spot as locals do” a precedence. And 62% of US vacationers really feel a visit is “wasted if they don’t expertise the native tradition.”
Nonetheless, what constitutes a neighborhood expertise goes past the extra apparent artwork, meals, and cultural experiences. It consists of the place and the way visitors keep at their locations. Airbnb gives distinctive native worth to the experiential traveler, inviting people and households to remain in cities and villages as in the event that they had been residents.
Dispersing Journey
This brings us to a different pattern within the journey area for 2024. Do you know who doesn’t need to create a loyalty program? Airbnb. They’re bucking this standard knowledge and focusing as a substitute on defending the core and going into worldwide markets like Asia, significantly Korea.
Checked out in isolation, this is perhaps thought-about a one-off enterprise alternative by an organization that has confronted points in common markets like New York Metropolis. Nonetheless, trying deeper into the reasoning behind this determination and the connection to the Airbnb mission, unlocks a journey pattern value noting for subsequent yr and past.
