Travel trends 2025 – where and how people will holiday this year

There are many new and continuing trends set to define travel in 2025. We can't touch on them all, but here are some of the most prominent and interesting themes that researchers and insiders expect to shape the travel industry in the coming year ...

The Skift research report predicts that 2025 will be "the year of long getaways".

One of the driving forces behind this anticipated trend is the proliferation on social media of paid time off (PTO) hacks. You may well have seen folks explain how to lengthen your holiday break by selecting strategic days of leave around public holidays.

Condé Nast Traveler believes newlyweds are also going to plan longer trips – honeymoons of around two weeks. This comes after a few years where shorter and closer-to-home honeymoons as well as staycation honeymoons were more the norm given the pandemic and price-point pains. Now, with many hotels offering more affordable self-catering accommodation options (as well as the rise of remote working opportunities), many honeymooners are going to once again book longer, more far-flung honeymoons.

Finally, the Skift report also predicts that luxury travellers will travel for even longer than usual, opting for getaways that average around a fortnight.

The aurora borealis illuminates the waterfall Skogafoss in Iceland

Nocturnal tourism – or 'noctourism' if you will – is another trend set to define travel in 2025, according to various sources. The term encompasses any after-daylight outings that are focused on nature. We're talking here of night-time safaris, night-time nature walks, night-time dives, and more. A big part of the appeal of noctourism is that the heat and crowds typical of daylight hours have usually dissipated.

Then there's also astrotourism. No, astrotourism doesn't refer in this context to travelling into space, but rather to destinations where the drawcard is 'looking up'. Think of travelling to see a solar eclipse, to go stargazing, or to witness the aurora borealis. Many astrotourism destinations are naturally quite rural or even extremely remote, as this enables you to get away from light and air pollution and so better see atmospheric phenomena, constellations and other such wonders.

So what do you think? Will you take part in the noctourism trend? At Follow Alice we have a few noctourism trips of our own to offer you, including summiting Mt Kilimanjaro under the light of a full moon, and taking part in an overnight hike up Mt Ol Doinyo Lengai, an active volcano in northern Tanzania.

According to the joint Amadeus and Globetrender 2025 travel report, change fatigue has many (and millennials in particular) yearning to revisit the past, whether that's a hotel with an old-timey look or a beloved holiday spot from childhood. So the trend here is to visit places imbued with nostalgia.

Nostalgic travel is the result of the 'rosy retrospection' zeitgeist that's blossomed in the twenty-first century. We're inclined to look with fondness at the recent past or at our own younger, seemingly simpler days.

We can see evidence for this nostalgic mindset in various industries. Take fashion, for instance, where 90s clothing trends are making a comeback. Then there's also the growing affinity for twentieth-century technologies like analogue cameras, typewriters and old-school video games. This groundswell of communal nostalgia can be seen in many industries, and now it is impacting travel too.

So what does nostalgic travel look like? It might mean travelling on a train revamped to have the feel of the 1960s. Or going skiing to try to recreate that one magical ski holiday from your childhood. Or taking your kids camping at that same resort you visited with your parents when you were a kid. So yes, we can expect destinations designed or decorated to incite nostalgia to receive more visitors this year. But so too will 'random' destinations that prompt a personal nostalgia.

The Sicilian town of Taormina has received more tourists thanks to The White Lotus

Euronews says in its 2025 travel report that 53% of its audience reported choosing a holiday destination based on a favourite movie or TV show. This isn't exactly a new trend, but it is a modern one that we can expect to continue to shape travel into 2025. So just as Hawaii and Sicily received a noticeable uptick in overall visitor numbers after seasons 1 and 2 of The White Lotus, for instance, we can expect to see a good number of travellers opting to visit the Thai locations that will be showcased this year after its season 3 has aired.

As to literature-inspired destinations, many folks are also going to decide where to vacation in 2025 based on favourite books. This shouldn't, perhaps, be surprising given the fact that book festivals, celebrity book clubs, BookTok and bricks-and-mortar book shops are all having a real moment right now.

Finally, we might add that the destinations travellers are choosing aren't always inspired by new shows, movies or books; sometimes the inspiration comes from personal or perennial favourites of yesteryear, linking this trend to the one on nostalgia just discussed.

Another anticipated 2025 travel trend is the sustainable holiday. More and more folks are seeking travel opportunities that will positively impact the local economy and environment. It's clear that the power of tourism to transform lives and even ecosystems is really taking hold of the hearts and minds of many travellers, especially among the younger generations.

"Travellers increasingly believe in the importance of creating a positive impact on local communities. As such, they are increasingly searching for authenticity, sustainability and experiential travel experience," says Zurab Pololikashvili, Secretary General of UN Tourism. These purpose-driven tourists are seeking out smaller, more off-the-beaten-track destinations that aren't suffering from overtourism. And they are looking for travel operators that do things ethically and invest in the local community and environment.

If this topic interests you, you might also like to read How to travel responsibly and sustainably. You might also like to explore our Rwanda gorilla trekking trips, which offer a life-changing experience that also helps with mountain gorilla conservation and creating a sustainable form of income for local communities.

Padel courts are springing up everywhere, including at tourist accommodations

Accor, the largest hospitality company in Europe, predicts that one of the most defining travel trends of 2025 will be travellers choosing destinations based on the athletics facilities and activities on offer.

This trend isn't about the adventure activities specific to a location but rather about popular sports. So think watersports, racket sports, golf, fencing, and more, all of which require specific facilities or equipment. Realising that many travellers want to use their time off to improve their sporting skills and fitness, many accommodations around the world are creating or upgrading their sporting facilities. Some are also starting to offer health programmes and training classes, which might range from a simple series of windsurfing lessons to a holistic wellness programme.

The final trend we want to mention is coolcations. As the portmanteau implies, this trend is about travellers choosing cooler climes for their 2025 vacations.

The primary catalyst for this travel is that global temperatures are on the rise, which has led to some intense summer heatwaves. Consequently, travellers – especially northerners like Brits who aren't used to great heat – are reconsidering their traditional summer peregrinations. Do they really want another super-hot and crowded beach holiday? Or do they perhaps instead want to go hiking in the mountains of Japan, or cruise the fjords of Norway? (This might remind you of our discussion on noctourism – folks are looking to get out of the heat!)

So whether it's local or international travel, industry experts expect to see an uptick in the number of people travelling to cooler climates and destinations in 2025. How about you? Is a coolcation calling your name? If yes, perhaps you might like to take a gander at our icy-cool Himalayan peak-climbing adventures!