What trends in luxury travel will take us into 2025?
Well, our November 2023 Further East Leadership Summit was extremely illuminating. We brought 12 top-tier travel leaders together and spent the past year digesting their insights and conversations.
First of all, we cannot ignore technology. AI is a major force reshaping work and our relationship with it. There are more discussions today about how we implement AI tools within the travel industry, at the right place in the sales or marketing funnel. Do you settle for a chatbot? A smarter package pricing tool? Something to help your marketing, either via language or images? These conversations are becoming deeper and more nuanced.
Next is the rising in hotels preparing their own immersive culinary experiences. I don’t just mean a five-star breakfast and dinner, (but) more like taste tours, one-off menus, a rich feast of the senses with aromas and skylines to complement a special meal. When you fix a guest’s mind on the moment as well as the plate in front of them, they’re more likely to come back. To that end, we’re seeing more creative, distinguished dining options in Asia-Pacific hotels.
Lastly, perhaps the biggest trend is regenerative travel – the ability to leave a place in a better state than we found it. Thanks to over-tourism and the speed at which new ‘unknown’ locations blow up on social media, we see that there is a problem in our industry. How do you price scarcity and justify it? Furthermore, can you bring guests into a regenerative project, rather than admiring it from afar? You need to tell a great story about your role within the region. Allowing visitors to get stuck into regenerative work themselves, rather than simply paying a higher price for their trip, can help that message land harder, alongside more spontaneous interactions with guides, staff and local craftspeople.
What do luxury travellers want now?
They’re thinking longer and harder about where they’re going and why. In the West, we’re witnessing so much malaise with consumerism, racing through disposable products and experiences for the sake of it. It’s not making us happier. People crave more connected, authentic, slower forms of discovery.
So, in the travel business, the whole idea of luxury is in flux – shifting from decadence to mindfulness, from leaving the world behind to engaging with it on a much deeper level than regular life may allow. Hotels, lodges, travel designers and DMCs that recognise and serve these desires will come out on top.
How do you see Asia-Pacific playing a role in meeting these needs?
The region often holds very different values to those in the West. For one, many Asia-Pacific countries traditionally elevate the collective over the individual; from Confucius to Buddhism, people here have a root awareness of the small improvements to body and mind that link every human being. We can see that in how Asia-Pacific brands treat their guests by emphasising subtle touches that slowly align into a satisfying whole, even if you don’t notice that as much as splashier, typically luxurious elements to service and design.
It’s the difference between waiting for a huge meal under magnificent chandeliers and eating by the ocean, under a night sky, with the guy who caught the crab putting it on the grill a few feet away.
Travel in this region is more naturally attuned to what we have in common, instead of what keeps us apart.
Meanwhile, the sheer optimism of tens of millions of hospitality workers in Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, etc, is very special. They want to welcome the rest of the world! The Asia-Pacific region is spearheading so much innovation in music, fashion, technology and pop culture nowadays. They know it’s their time in the driver’s seat again.
