Industry Voices 

Leisure Travel: The Future Defined
 
What does the future hold for leisure travel? An independent study analyses the drivers of change and predicts the new motivators of travel.

What trends are shaping leisure travel? Who will travel in the future? Why do people travel? And how will their motivations change?

A study conducted by one of Europe’s leading independent think tanks, Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute, for European tour operator, Kuoni Travel Holding attempts to shed some light on the mysteries of leisure travel.

Released at ITB Berlin, the study, among other things, looks at trends that will shape leisure travel in the future and the motivations of travellers.

While it says that holiday travel will essentially remain a mass business, the growing trend towards individualization in societies will generate more demand for individual holidays.

“Holidays will be less frequently booked as package arrangements and more often compiled a la carte,” it said.
 
However, people will also look for a greater sense of community – “in many cases, the need for personal contact and to be together with friends and family is the reason for the journey - and this will become increasingly important”, it predicted.

“In the future, tourists will expect more meeting and dating services. The growing number of singles calls for services that will help them organise their social and love lives,” It added.

The report said that as life grows more complex and chaotic, people will need to take more holidays “as a counterbalance”.

By 2020, the report said there would be no clearly defined leisure segments as holidays become increasingly bound up with other activities, for example, hotels with clinics, academies or museums; vacation clubs that also operate handicraft workshops; and tower blocks with wellness resorts.

 It predicted that by 2020, there would be virtually no unknown destinations. “The world has been explored,” it said, adding. “The more we can afford, the more we come up against the limits of our physical resources. Opportunities for relaxation will become more important than entertainment.”

The study also delves into the different motivators of holiday travel and divides them in the following categories.

• Whatever: No expectations. I travel because I can. Cheap offers generate demand.

• Recreational: The search for recuperation, relaxation and regeneration. Holidays as emotional medicine against exhaustion, stress and depression.

• Experiential: The search for new experiences and sensations. To discover one’s self. The aim is not to see new places but to see with new eyes.

• Diversionary: The search for pleasure, sport, games, variety and the chance to get away from it all. The chance to lose one’s self.

• Experimental: The search for adventure and a dialogue with foreign ideas. Freedom from the limits imposed by things familiar and owned.

 • Tribal: The search for love and togetherness with partner, family and friends.

• Existential: The search for purpose, happiness, relief and transformation. Travel with the aim of becoming part of something bigger and to find one’s way.

It predicted the emergence of hyper, holiday hubs – hyper-modern recuperation centres which offer the entire spectrum of what the heart desires “with everything – including the airport – conveniently located in the same place”.

“Holiday hubs offer appropriate ready-made holidays, industrially prepared to the extent that they only have to be unpacked and served. Once the success factors for “good holidays” have been discovered, it will be possible to reproduce them wherever required. Given sufficient reserves of land and good transport links, it will be possible to setup holiday hubs anywhere in the world,” it said.

And it listed the following as what tomorrow’s travellers will look for when they travel.

• A sense of home

“People who frequently change their places of work and residence and travel a lot no longer dream of exotic countries. Mobile people with no fixed roots, at home in several different places, yearn for a genuine home.

“It will be increasingly necessary to satisfy the need for security, cuddles and a feeling of being cared for away from home,” it said, adding,  “Tomorrow’s travellers will be drawn less to the attractions of the foreign than to those of Hotel Mama where they will be looked after and spoiled.”

• Meeting and mating

Describing travel as a relationship market, the study said, “We travel to meet families and friends, to encounter new personalities or because we are secretly hoping for the love of our lives.”

As the search for partners becomes even more difficult in lives, it said that an exciting market for tour operators would be setting up “real meeting place”.

“In future, marriage agencies will provide the software while tour operators supply the stage for romance, as well as the players for potential love stories,” it said.

• Emotional medicine

Greater health awareness will create demand for health-based holidays and the study said that “the emphasis would be less on the hardware, bathing facilities, saunas, fitness rooms, etc and much more on the software, in other words, emotional and spiritual care”.

 • A sense of “getting to” rather than escaping

“Arriving rather than escaping” is likely to see traditional notions of luxury superseded by new kinds of travel luxury: quality of life through more calm, more space and more time for oneself and one’s family.

“This means that travellers will be seeking destinations which are convenient to get to and are places where they can enjoy the quality of life to the full and find calmness and security.”

Finally, it predicted that by 2070, it might even be possible to implant a travel experience in our brains, as in the film “Total Recall”.