Travel trends in 2022 – the hospitality outlook

The tourism industry is at its turning point coming into the year 2022. In 2020 and 2021, when the pandemic hit, the travel industry had almost shut down around the world. Back-to-back social distancing policies and travel restrictions have been applied to ensure public health during the epidemic season. Many tourisms promotional activities have been implemented to adapt to the new normal through a deep understanding of customers’ insights. As a result, the majorities are sharing the common ground, trying to “make up” for the lost time by seizing every possible opportunity available within their budget, contributing the share on initiate new travel trends in 2022.

The most exciting year of hospitality 2022 is filled with popular travel trends.

Big group travel

A recent study from the Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL) in Switzerland, one of the world’s top 3 prestigious hotel management universities, showed that an increase in consumer awareness toward the surrounding environment had created new opportunities and new trends, especially the sustainability, health, and well-being travel trend.

After closing borders internationally worldwide, the year 2022 has recorded the rising demand for independent travel. EHL Associate Professor of Finance, Dr. Philippe Masset, expects the same thing, observing that the need for independent travel surpasses, particularly interesting since the pandemic has fueled this trend. This consequently boosts the big group travel trend-forward, grouping the independent travelers with the unique benefits of the big group trend:

After two years of continuous lock-down around the world, extensive group travels have been preferred in the tourism and hospitality industry.

Personality changes

Group travel fits travelers who have easy-going lifestyles. Group members learn to take things lightly and get along with everyone around them. When participating in such trips, you shall likely adapt, adjust your personality, social life to become more outgoing, active, and vibrant.

Cost-saving

Traveling in large groups is budget-friendly. The more members your group has, the more efficient your budget is. From transportation fees, hotel accommodation fees, meal fees, discounts are usually offered on many purchases, including incentives, discounts, and gifts.

Improvement in communication skills, experiences gaining

Each member in the group contributes a different feature; making connections among members can be an exciting process. Traveling in a big group helps individuals excel themselves, step out of their comfort zones, exchange experiences and emotions, and learn and help each other throughout. In addition, each individual gets to improve their solidarity to be reliable companionship and the spirit of sharing.

Business travel resumes

The ongoing discovery of Delta, Omicron variants, and so on creates unspoken barriers in the tourism fields in general and the hospitality industry in particular. However, travel experts said they remained optimistic that business travel shall pick up strongly as early as the beginning of 2022.

One thing for sure is business travel shall take over the hospitality by storm.

Christopher J. Nassetta, the president and chief executive of Hilton, had shared last month, “People have to meet [but] it takes time to plan it.” So after the challenging year of 2021, we have been planning carefully, with even a backup plan on hand.

The airline and hotel industries have always been heavily reliant on business travel, which has accounted for a significant portion of revenue due to last-minute booking and willingness to pay outrageously high for specific-hour flights and accommodations.

According to World Travel and Tourism Council forecast on the business travel market shares for 2022 shall meet two-thirds of the revenue before the pandemic in the recent survey and forecast on market demand in 2022.

Bucket list destinations checking off

Every trip got delayed and canceled due to the pandemic. Everyone has been coming up with their version of the all-time favorite bucket list destinations, which list all the places and countries they have to visit at least “once in a lifetime.” Setting the vacation goals with a long “to-do-list” for solo and group travel throughout social distancing.

Everyone can’t wait to cross off their bucket list destinations one after another, making the hospitality industry prepared to welcome their guests soon.

Whether you’re visiting a domestic destination or traveling abroad, be as informed and equipped as possible about the cities and locations you will see. It spares you a lot of time in finding the place while you’re there, nor have to panic once you get there. Moreover, the more detailed your pre-planning is, the more proactive you’ll be, not to mention that careful calculation and speculation shall help you budget effectively.

Sustainability travel

Sustainability travel is a fundamental development and provision of tourism activities to meet the tourists’ and locals’ needs. However, it is essential to ensure the conservation and embellishment of resources to develop tourism activities in the future while satisfying the aesthetic, economic, and social needs of people:

• Create many benefits for economic development, providing a stable source of income for local communities and stakeholders.
• Protect the living environment, minimize the impact on the environment. Helping people’s living environment to be in check, through which people shall benefit from it.
• Sustainable tourism development helps to reduce social vices by providing jobs for local people.
• Resource exploitation becomes awarded and adequately executed, ensuring natural resources grow and develop for future generations to follow and take advantage of.

Loving nature travel trends have been the stable trend for the past few years and more to come, especially for the hospitality industry when guests are aware of the surroundings.

The world is gradually shifting to adapt to the new normal post-pandemic.

“The industry must evolve to remain relevant to the new demands and needs of travelers in a

post-pandemic world.”

– said Dr Jean-Philippe Weisskopf.

Many new tourism trends are gradually blooming to catch up with the new tourists’ mindset, making sure to be in line with the shifting trends and ensuring to follow the health and safety standards. The same goes with the hospitality industry; we are trying to move forward to promote the industry’s potential and recovery the economy ultimately after years of “immobility.”