Megatrends 2025

In this article I reflected the Megatrends of travelling and how world will show up in 2025. After 2020 pandemic many people have changes their way of thinking about travelling. In the la st few years travelling has faced many difficult setbacks like pandemics, wars, the climate change and unstable economic situation and those things have direct impact on travelling business. People have started to wonder about their own travelling habits and reasons more carefully. They may think twice before booking a flight and are looking for another option to have a new experience and way of travel. Are there other choices closer to our own country that we just haven’t thought of? Do I really need to fly? 

Findings

Nowadays one of the biggest problems is mass tourism and how it burdens the environment and the big cities a lot. Mass tourism brings money, but on the other side of coin, it consumes resources, causes erosion in the area and also causes disturbance and noise. There are disturbing problems in many cities. In 2025 travelling will evolve towards more local tourism and people are more aware of their own responsibility and behavior as consumers. In Dennis Schaalis article about Travel’s New Cadence Is More Deliberate, Introspective and Soulful, he wrote that costumers are more interested about ecological alternatives ja nature friendly options to travel. 

Travelers are looking for lesser known places, like small villages and places where one can travel without flying. They want to find places where they can spend more time than usually and at the same time have new “slow experience”. I think there is influences about “hyggeily” atmosphere. 

On the other hand, the world’s political instability also has a limiting effect on travel. Many travel destinations that were once considered safe have lost tourists. Some countries are even perceived as hostile. Similarly, economic uncertainty has a greater impact on the amount of euros used for tourism. I think it´s quite interesting that after the big crises starts an era of development and innovation. Crises push us to our discomfort area where we all need to grow. This also applies to tourism business.

Today we can work everywhere. We can just pack our laptop and go. We are free to travel in so many different ways. Booking a ticket and planning trips are very easy today. There is so many websites, which offer very high quality services to those who want to find something fast and easy. Just make a few clicks and you are good to go. Those digital options serve younger consumers, they are just born to operate with Google and different kinds of application and software.  

In 2020 we were afraid that travelling business has changed for good and customers are rejecting big cities. In 2025 we can be relieved that the threat didn´t materialize. We can almost say that tourism has recovered better than we anticipated. Of course, so many travel companies had to change their way of operating. For example, hotels had to improve the hygiene level to meet the current requirements. (Dennis Schaal, Travel’s New Cadence Is More Deliberate, Introspective and Soulful)

Lebawit Lily Girma wrote in her article Backyard tourism about how 
a pedestal but far-flung exploration recovers, that big cities have recovered better than expected from pandemic by 2025. Along with local tourism, big cities are still popular tourist destinations.

In her article Hotels Are Back with Big Upsides for Owners Who Stuck Out The Hard Times BY Cameron Sperance, he reminds us that hotels have a need to develop their model of operation to survive in the changing world and it hasn´t been easy. Companies have had to find new platforms to fill the empty rooms. One way has been to create a new cooperation model with b-companies and offer them rooms and congress facilities. It has been expensive to keep the rooms empty.

Traditional hotel industry has faced challenges by new busines models like Airbnb, short term rental and different kind of lifestyle and boutique hotels. People need more exceptional and unique travel experiences and they are ready to pay more money for it. They probably travel less often and that is why they want to have more value for they money. Makes sense when you think of it. New travelling culture offers different options for those who travel with the laptop and want to combine they work and free time. That´s one of the reasons why short-term rental business have grown so much lately. 

Conclusion

I think Megatrends in 2025 still seem to be more about local tourism and short-term renting. This will be a growing model of operating for those who are travelling with laptop as ways of working remotely have improved significantly during and after COVID. I also think that here in Finland this way of traveling applies especially to Lapland. In 2025 people are more aware about climate issues and want to make more responsible choices and avoid little bit more travelling by flying. I believe that train and other environmentally friendly trips will become more popular and people want to find new places to explore. In 2025 many European big cities example Lisbon and Barcelona have made efforts to limit short-term rentals preferred by tourists. Those new regulations will hardly limit the number of tourists, but I believe that some of the tourists will turn they eyes to smaller cities around the big cities and will spend more time in another areas.

Customers need to have more value for their money and experience tourism will be more popular too. Business travelers are a growing group of travelers, who come to destinations to do remote work. They want to combine work and free time and demand different types of services. I believe that mass tourism is still strong and alive. I haven´t been in Roma and haven´t seen Pyramid yet… 

Bibliography

ARTICLE: Skift Megatrends 2025, Licensed and published by Skift in 2021