This is my reaction paper about Skift megatrends 2025 is a megatrend forecast for the year 2025, including counterparts for each written scenario. It explores the future scenarios how the tourism field could have developed after rough pandemic years. The study unit themes come up in the future trends regarding the digital operating environment, for example.
The scenarios tell what has happened in the tourism field in 2025, using data from previous years as a guide. I feel like the first three presented megatrends are the most plausible ones, resonating with the trends we’ve already seen.
The destination matters
The megatrends that caught my eye are destination-decisiveness, leisure travel and hotels being back. There are paralleling themes in the written scenarios; slow traveling movement, and travelers’ (and travel industries) raised consciousness towards the environmental issues that the climate change has brought to our planet.
One scenario presented that online travel agencies and tour operators are offering travelers to change to help the locals developing the area by planting trees etc. I think this is really something that could happen now that people are more acknowledged by the consequences of their daily choices in life. Why not help the local community if you’re enjoying their land and culture?
Predictions show that leisure travel will continue to prioritize domestic options, indicating its enduring allure. In the text it says, “travelers are favoring coastal drive-to-destinations, wellness-oriented rural areas and cultural experiences within 100 miles”. These wellness-oriented and cultural experiences keywords are also reflecting the destination decisiveness and slow travel megatrend, I’d see. Global political instabilities, climate change effects, and a stronger sense of community encourage for domestic travel. If the governments are investing in the roads and infrastructure, it can develop domestic traveling.
But if cities rethink mobility, address pollution and improve air quality, the people who escaped cities in the pandemic years are now coming back. As the technology has advanced and changed the tourism industry with their new contactless inventions during the pandemic, all that technology is expected to stay, as it also has cost-cutting benefits. If people travel long-haul more seamlessly with contactless airports and technological advantages in immigration processing, they surely won’t stay inside the domestic lines.
Hotels in change
The pandemic surely changed the way hotels worked, and in the megatrend predictions the same way seems to continue. Inspired by the not cleaning the rooms daily, in the prediction hotels cut labor costs tied to heavily staffed front desks and unbundle the services, charging for them separately, the text says. In my opinion, it’s at the same time a good and a bad thing. In the environmental and financial point of view it seems to cut costs and save resources, but in my mind, it doesn’t sound very appalling if the services are purchasable. The daily room cleaning should still belong in the service but have an option for the customer to decide; maybe it’ll make the customer feel like they have contributed to the fight against the climate change by choosing not to get the daily cleaning.
Another point in the text was that the vacation travelers want to book a home or condo through short-term rental just like Airbnb has showed to us. That trend seems not to fade away, and the megatrend shows that hotels chains and brands are building own resorts and such. This makes me think is there enough real estate in relation to demand or will people miss the services the hotels provided? Is it profitable enough in a long term to accommodate fewer people with a cost of building new buildings like rental apartments?
Other megatrends
Other megatrends in the text mentioning were about remote working becoming a big business, Asians rediscovering local destinations and the subscription model becoming a mainstream business model for the industry.
I can see people will take advantage of the technology and stay working remotely despite going back to the office is possible again. When people realize there’s a chance to make the same work from another side of the world as it would be in their office. Experiencing the world while working as a full-time office worker shouldn’t be just salespeople and executives’ privilege. Regular people should have that chance too. And with this way, it truly can happen.
If I had a change to have a “Netflix for tourism” and pay a monthly fee in exchange to get three package holidays, I’d be interested. I think it would be an easy way to go explore the world and support the tourism business. It also makes me think would it also reduce the destinations available if the companies are collaborating with this subscription platform. And if it’s the mainstream, what happens to the smaller businesses? But like in the movie industry, there is always an audience for the indie films. Maybe the small tourism businesses can stay alive despite being in the shadows of the subscription platform of traveling.
What if the bad times haven’t ended?
In conclusion, the tourism industry has changed permanently with the global pandemic. The values of the travelers are changing with the rising consciousness, and the developed technology within contactless services are here to stay due its cost-saving impact. In my reference material, I noticed the scenarios stayed pretty much in the same megatrends that are already familiar; climate change effects, digitalization, and developing technology.
We’re now in a global economic slump and economical recovering from the pandemic’s effects and there’s wars and other crisis going on. Covid-19 was only part of it. It made me think what kind of megatrends those would’ve birth as people don’t have money to travel and how would the affordable domestic traveling look like? The borders might be open, but is there money to take to other destinations?