Virtuoso has partnered with journey pattern forecasting company, Globetrender, to unveil the Luxury Travel Trend Watch: 2025. Working with world information from Virtuoso’s 2024 Brand & Travel Tracker Survey – a world survey of its high-net-worth/ultra-high-net-worth clientele – Globetrender and Virtuoso have recognized seven tendencies shaping the luxurious journey panorama for 2025, from Silver Bullet Wellness and Wander Women to F**k-it Lists.
Wellness tourism, projected to develop 16.6 % yearly and attain £1.6 trillion by 2027 (Global Wellness Institute), is seeing the rise of “Silver Bullet Wellness,” which gives personalised well being habits and longevity plans. Luxury travellers are actually in search of therapies for points like insomnia, cognitive decline and illness prevention, transferring past conventional pampering therapies to life-extension programmes. Switzerland, Spain, Germany and Thailand are among the many international locations main the cost, with high-net-worth travellers more and more favouring retreats providing intensive, tailor-made mind-body transformations. With one in eight Virtuoso purchasers travelling for wellness, demand for specialised therapies is hovering. Adopters of Silver Bullet Wellness wish to return residence regenerated and rewired, whether or not that’s due to a “monk-level” meditation retreat on the Aleenta Retreat Chiang Mai in Thailand; genetic testing at Buchinger Wilhelmi in Germany; menopause remedy on the Amilla Maldives; or “quantum healing” at Kintsugi Space in Abu Dhabi.
F**k-It Lists
The time period “bucket list” has lengthy dominated the journey panorama, however now, the main focus has shifted to spontaneous, short-term experiences, reflecting a “carpe diem” mindset. In 2025 and past, travellers are embracing “F**k-It Lists” – spontaneous, enjoyable and liberating adventures that prioritise dwelling within the second. As the prosperous proceed to favour experiences over luxurious items, this pattern is fuelling splurges on extra extravagant modes of journey like yacht charters, first-class flights and personal jets. “F**k-It Lists” additionally serve to push travellers out of their consolation zones, specializing in private fulfilment fairly than typical vacationer spots. Examples embrace tagging hammerhead sharks in Costa Rica, canyoneering in Utah’s Zion National Park, scorching air ballooning in Namibia, attending Burning Man or taking part in a psychedelic ceremony. Companies like Pelorus organise supercar highway journeys, whereas Based on a True Story provides distinctive experiences with actors, costumes and scripts, equivalent to shock kidnappings or pirate treasure hunts. For excessive adventurers, Desert Island Survival teaches castaway abilities on uninhabited islands in locations like Tonga and Panama, the place members should survive with out instructors after studying fundamental survival abilities.
Mood Boarding
When planning a visit, most individuals consider the locations and actions, typically overlooking how they wish to really feel. Many search rest however discover themselves nonetheless serious about work by the pool. In actuality, an itinerary involving bodily actions like climbing could higher assist disconnect from skilled stress. As journey designers ask the suitable inquiries to faucet into purchasers’ true motivations, they will deal with deeper emotional wants, giving rise to the “Mood Boarding” pattern in pre-trip consultations.
Philosopher Alain de Botton notes that the problem of journey is that “you take yourself with you,” stressing the significance of understanding the aim behind journeys. Virtuoso believes luxurious journey advisors ought to assist purchasers distinguish between “wants” and “needs,” curating experiences that provide emotional nourishment. For occasion, a candlelit seaside dinner could also be much less concerning the occasion itself and extra about fostering connection or forgiveness between companions. Philippe Brown, founding father of Brown + Hudson, a Virtuoso member company, was an early pioneer of “Mood Boarding,” utilizing psychometric questionnaires to evaluate travellers’ psychological preferences. In 2023, Black Tomato launched “See You in the Moment,” a collection of experiences designed to create lasting psychological impression by selling presence, equivalent to a candlelit banquet inside a volcano in Iceland.
XZ Beta Travel
By 2025, seven generations shall be travelling collectively for the primary time in historical past, as “Beta Babies” are born to Gen Z dad and mom (aged 16-30). This consists of Generation Alpha (aged 1-15 in 2025), Millennials, Gen X, Boomers and the Matures. A key pattern, “XZ Beta Travel,” will see younger Gen Z dad and mom touring with their kids and Gen X grandparents, who typically finance the journeys.
Gen Z, with 2 billion folks and anticipated to signify 27 % of the worldwide workforce by 2025, is a rising and aspirational shopper group. McKinsey studies that 35 % of the luxurious journey market consists of “aspiring” travellers with internet worths between $100,000 and $1 million, usually beneath 40 and more and more from Asia. This demographic drives over a 3rd of the $239 billion luxurious journey market. The problem is catering to this new group of younger dad and mom, who typically discover inspiration on TikTok (60 % of customers are Gen Z). While many Gen Zs are delaying or opting out of parenthood, even a small proportion having kids will nonetheless quantity to thousands and thousands, and inns are adapting. Shangri-La Hong Kong Island, for instance, reworked a complete ground right into a luxurious haven for Beta Babies and Generation Alpha, full with communal areas and themed rooms like treehouses and submarines. In the Italian Dolomites, Sonnwies caters completely to households with its wellness choices, together with milk baths and chocolate massages for youths, an aquapark, playgrounds and zoo.
Wander Women
The rise of unbiased journey amongst girls is about to develop in 2025 and past, with extra girls of all ages choosing solo, adventurous journeys. Travel suppliers are responding by providing tailor-made experiences to cater to this pattern, dubbed “Wander Women.” According to Virtuoso, 71 % of its solo travellers are girls, with 47 % of them divorced, separated or widowed, highlighting a surge in post-partner or family-raising journey.
AmaWaterways eliminated single dietary supplements for solo travellers on choose European river cruises in 2024, whereas Swiss journey community A Small World launched the Solo Cruise Company, concentrating on girls 55+. In small group journey, Intrepid Travel will debut its first women-only journeys to Saudi Arabia in November 2024, in partnership with a neighborhood female-owned operator. Experiences embrace visiting Saudi girls’s houses and female-only seashores. Meanwhile, startups like Mom’z supply “babymoons” in Spain for pregnant girls, and the Amilla Maldives hosted a “mid-life wellbeing” retreat for perimenopausal and menopausal girls in 2024. Luxury suppliers are discovering niches in solo feminine journey, specializing in private connections, distinctive experiences and girls’s particular wants.
Memoirs in Motion
The pattern “Memoirs in Motion” entails luxurious travellers hiring skilled movie crews to doc their travels, turning holidays into cinematic experiences and private legacies. Unlike the “Set-Jetting” pattern, which focuses on visiting film areas, this new pattern lets purchasers star in their very own documentaries, reflecting the rising demand for personalised storytelling and reminiscence preservation.
With most individuals storing hundreds of unused pictures and movies on their telephones, luxurious firms like Cookson Adventures cater to the necessity for significant retrospectives. Inspired by David Attenborough-style documentaries, Cookson gives purchasers with cinematographers to create day by day movie edits, social media reels and full documentaries, beginning at £13,000. According to Louis Waite, Cookson’s head of pictures, capturing visitors’ feelings is simply as vital as filming the motion, with some purchasers even requesting on-the-go edits for social media. Other luxurious journey firms like Quintessentially Travel, Pelorus, and Joro Experiences supply comparable companies, with mission prices starting from £25,000 to over £350,000. These firms remodel journey into cinematic reminiscences, offering a visually beautiful file of extraordinary experiences.
Racketeering
The pattern of “Racketeering,” coined by Globetrender, displays the rising reputation of racket sports activities like tennis, pickleball and padel throughout holidays, spurred by the 2024 movie “Challengers.” Companies like Pickleball in Paradise now organise racket sport-themed holidays. Resorts worldwide are capitalising on this pattern by including state-of-the-art courts, clinics and tournaments. Notable locations embrace Marbella Club, the birthplace of padel in Europe, and Necker Island, the place Richard Branson hosts the unique Necker Cup tennis match. His Moskito Island property additionally provides tennis amenities.
Luxury resorts like Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in France, in partnership with Lacoste, have embraced this pattern with branded tennis courts and a limited-edition tennis attire assortment. Meanwhile, the Maldives’ Soneva Fushi and Soneva Jani resorts added padel courts, internet hosting professional gamers by means of the “Soneva Stars” program. Other locations like One&Only Aesthesis in Greece, Bürgenstock Resort in Switzerland, and Le Grand Bellevue in Switzerland have additionally embraced racket sports activities. Even cruise strains, equivalent to Crystal Cruises, now supply onboard pickleball and padel courts on their ships.
