Slow travel and family escapes focus for Abta Travel Trends
Tom ParryA new Abta event this month will explore opportunities for agents to capitalise on the “slow travel” movement, examine key trends in the luxury travel market, and offer insights into vital changes in consumer habits as they journey into the post-Covid world.
The association’s Travel Trends Conference on 24 November will be held in a hybrid format, with delegates either attending the live event at Google’s London offices, or joining virtually and interacting via a digital platform.
Speakers include Cat Jones, founder and chief executive of Byway Travel, and Black Tomato co-founder Tom Marchant who spoke to TTG ahead of the conference to discuss their sessions and insights.
Jones, who launched flight-free, slow travel specialist Byway Travel last year, said she wanted to “inject some insight” into shifting consumer sentiments and show travel firms how they can capitalise on offering more “overland, multi-stop, journey-based” trips.
“People have become more empowered during the pandemic around sustainability and are changing their attitudes to travel,” said Jones. “Our mission is to make slow travel mainstream – we want to create a movement.
“It’s less about coming from place A and holidaying at place B, we’re trying to emphasise there is an opportunity when we return to travel to make it more of a journey or experience instead of it being just a means to an end.”
Changing client behaviour will also be a key theme of Marchant’s presentation, whose luxury business has developed new products around consumers’ desire to spend more quality time with loved ones.
Marchant said that need had emerged as a prevalent booking trend for Black Tomato, leading to a new strategic focus on “BFGs” – big family get-togethers – since travel’s restart. “We’re seeing huge amount of requests from families and multigenerational groups wanting to go off and do real, meaningful things together,” he said.
To capture that demand, Black Tomato has launched a new family-orientated programme called Field Trip, which features educational experiences that range from filmmaking classes in Cuba and working as an archaeologist in Egypt, to exploring the fields of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) during a tour of Cern in Switzerland, home to the Large Hadron Collider.
Marchant said he would also touch on other trends, including what he described as the “rebirth” of cities such as New York. “Some areas are more economically accessible than they were before and there are new experiences and not massive tourist crowds, so it makes for a fascinating time to visit.”
Abta Travel Trends
Abta’s Travel Trends conference will take place on Wednesday 24 November.
It will be held in a hybrid format, with a live event taking place from 9.30am at Google's St Giles High Street base in London. Delegates can also join virtually too.
Register for your place and check out the event programme at abta.com/traveltrendsconf.
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Tom Parry
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