I don’t know about you, but my Insta feed was hijacked by vacation pictures from friends and families this year. It seems like everyone finally decided to go through with their new year’s resolution of travelling more. Except me. I just gawked at all the amazing pictures while finishing my second packet of Lays. Man, I’m really killing this life thing. Anyway, all this got me wondering as to what has been happening in the travel segment this year. And with the year coming to an end, it feels only right to do a review of the travel trends of 2019! Let’s dive into it!
Fitness retreats
2019 witnessed an influx of fitness and wellness retreats. People travelled across the globe with the sole purpose of taking a break and getting healthy simultaneously. Fitness and wellness professionals conducted classes in picturesque locations all over the world. From a yoga retreat in Bali to a boxing class on the sandy beaches of Costa Rica, people thronged these retreats in groups for a transformational experience. Though these retreats have been around for a while, they gained immense popularity in 2019.
The Travel Yogi is one such organisation that clubs wellness and adventure travel to offer an amazing transformative experience. They hosted a trove of retreats this year from Bali to Panama. Another fitness retreat worth a mention is by Active Escapes that hosts retreats in exquisite locations with high-end amenities. Their energy-boosting fitness retreats usually last about a week and typically include accommodation in luxurious resorts and healthy gourmet meals.
Solo trips
We have all dreamed of travelling solo at least once. Looks like a lot of people actually went ahead and fulfilled that dream in 2019. This was the year for solo travellers. With accommodations, travel services, and packages designed for solo travellers, travelling alone became much easier. Women didn’t hesitate to travel alone, thanks to the female accommodations and special travel services designed just for women.
Klook, a Hong Kong-based travel booking platform predicted at the beginning of 2019 itself that ‘Solo travel’ will be one of the biggest trends of 2019. By October, solo trips comprised 18% of the global travel bookings made this year, a whopping 7% increase from last year. Just in India, the percentage of women solo travellers increased by a drastic rate. UK, Australia, New Zeland, and Vietnam were some of the popular international destinations for Solo travel from India.
Biometric airports
The advent of high-end smartphones has made people familiar with recognition technology such as fingerprint scanning and face recognition. The biometric technology was introduced in numerous airports all over the world this year for the check-in and boarding process eliminating long queues.
One of the busiest international airports in the world, Dubai International Airport launched a biometric system tunnel this year to replace manual human checks and simplify the whole boarding process. With the biometric tunnel in place, people can pass through passport control within 30 seconds. Passengers are supposed to register beforehand at a designated kiosk and then pass through the tunnel which uses iris recognition to let passengers get through. For now, the system is open only to First-class and Business class passengers. KIA (Kempegowda International Airport) in partnership with Vistara has launched a biometric programme in the Bangalore airport.
Buh-bye hotels! Airbnb and hostels are in now!
Move over guests who leave wet towels on the bed. Hotels have found their new adversary and it’s none other than Airbnb. Ever since Airbnb came into the picture, hotels have taken a backseat. Airbnb’s authentic venues at economical prices have led to a lot of people switching from hotels to their properties. Especially in 2019, a lot of people opted for hostels and Airbnb properties over hotels.
Going by the fact that Airbnb racked up more than 200,000 million stays in 2018, it is guaranteed that 2019 is only going to be much better for the company. But growth wasn’t limited just to Airbnbs this year, hostels also witnessed a steady growth with more and more people being comfortable with booking hostels. As the number of solo travellers increased in 2019, so did the number of hostel bookings.
Personalised tour packages
Tour packages never really excited anyone… until now. Personalised tour packages are a boon to tourists who prefer package trips but also want to do things their own way. Customisable tour packages became all the craze in the year 2019 as it gave people the leniency to design their trips the way they wanted to.
Packaged trips have always been popular with families and groups. Revenue in the package trip segment amounted up to the US $205,504 m. With customised trips, these travel packages are only getting more popular by the day.
These were some of the popular travel trends of 2019 and I hope they are here to stay for good. And maybe, next year, I will finally travel instead of lusting after all the travel pictures on Instagram.
Find the annual trends review interesting? You should probably check this fashion trend review for 2019!
