What are luxury travellers of the future searching for?

In the face of continued global uncertainty and market volatility, the future of the luxury travel and hospitality sector remains a challenging one, but those brands and services that allow individuals to enjoy the human qualities of travel will find a way forward.

As reported by Bain & Company, the experiential luxury sector has grown by 5-6% annually over the past five years, and it is projected to grow to a value of $1.2 trillion by 2025. Luxury continues to benefit from this shift in consumer perception regarding an investment in luxury.

But our notions of “experience”– as first posited more than 15 years ago by Joseph B Pine, are once again on the move. Enter the Transformation Economy: a new era in luxury travel, where throwaway fly-and-flop experiences are traded for more meaningful, purpose-driven moments that are about the self-actualised consumer driving life-affirming and life-changing expectations from their interactions with brands.

Make memories

According to the FT, 64% of luxury consumers agree luxury experiences create more memories than luxury goods. So, as luxurians continue to embrace “omnilux” lifestyles, travel brands across the sector must meet their demands for all-encompassing experiences, from the novel and fun to slower, more meaningful moments. But what is driving this new era of travel?

For us at The Future Laboratory, powerful factors are reshaping the world of luxury. Consumers are shifting their focus from products, evolving into new demographic structures, and re-evaluating their relationship with wealth itself.

Following a spate of post-Covid revenge spending, we can now expect aspirational consumers to be more selective, placing higher value on fulfilling experiences and personal growth over high-ticket items. In light of global social and political events, a mass re-organisation is afoot in terms of how luxury travellers structure their lives, influencing where, when and why they choose to travel.

And as our lifestyles and attitudes shift, so too does our definition of luxury. Ewan Venters, CEO of art gallery Hauser & Wirth’s hospitality arm Art Farm, which counts The Fife Arms amongst its hotels, says there is a “yearning for intimacy and connection” that is less superficial than previous iterations of luxury, plus an openness to more varied and fluid experiences.