Expedia Group, a leading travel booking site for both domestic and international airline tickets and hotels, recently announced six travel trends for 2024 under the name “Unpack’24.
In this article, we would like to share those six travel trends announced by Expedia Group with our travel-loving readers.
By reading the article, you may find new travel ideas for 2024. We hope you enjoy the article to the end.
Introducing 6 Travel Trends for 2024
- Travel to filming locations
- Travel to look-alike destinations of popular travel destinations
- Music Tour Travel
- Non-Alcoholic Travel
- Atmosphere-driven Hotel Selection
- Itinerary Planning by Generated AI
These are the six travel trends announced by Expedia Group for 2024.
Let’s look at them one by one!
Travel to filming locations
Travel that actually visits places used in popular variety shows, dramas, movies, and video streaming services. This is the first travel trend for 2024.
In fact, location tours were also a travel trend in 2023, making it two years in a row.
Various locations around the world are being used for filming, and the films and locations that attract each of us will vary.
Even in Japan, where I live, there are many locations to travel to due to the influence of anime productions.
How about taking a tour of unique and beautiful locations where you can go as you please?
Travel to look-alike destinations of popular travel destinations
The second is a look-alike tourist destination trip, where you go sightseeing in another place similar to a popular destination.
Popular tourist destinations are crowded because they attract many people. Also, the cost is often higher due to the price of the tourist attraction.
However, by going to a look-alike destination, you can avoid the crowds and travel at a lower cost.
Below are some examples of look-alike destinations offered by the Expedia Group.
| famous tourist attraction | look-alike tourist attraction |
|---|---|
| Seoul | Taipei |
| Bangkok, Thailand | Pattaya, Thailand |
| Santorini, Greece | Paros, Greece |
| St. Maarten (Netherlands) | Curacao, The Netherlands |
| Sydney, Australia | Perth, Australia |
| London, United Kingdom | Liverpool, United Kingdom |
| Lisbon, Portugal | Palermo, Italy |
| Geneva, Switzerland | Quebec, Canada |
| Zermatt, Switzerland | Sapporo, Japan |
| Nashville, USA | Memphis, U.S.A. |
As shown in the table above, look-alike tourist attractions are places that resemble popular places.
Here are some places that are not listed in the table above, but are look-alike tourist attractions that I recommend.
You can visit my house as a look-alike tourist attraction of Azuchi Castle built by Nobunaga Oda, a famous tourist attraction! (It’s not such a splendid house. Rather, it’s a ramshackle house).
Joking aside, this trip to a less expensive and slightly less popular look-alike tourist attraction similar to a popular tourist attraction was the second travel trend for 2024.
Music Tour Travel
The third travel trend is music tour travel. You can go to your favorite artist’s music tour or live concert even if it is far away from your home. This is such a way of traveling.
If the artist is popular worldwide, it is good to go not only in Japan but also overseas!
By the way, when I was in Toronto, I was excited to go to a Justin Bieber concert.
However, Justin got sick the day before the concert. The concert was cancelled.
Please Justin…
Non-Alcoholic Travel
The fourth is “non-alcohol travel,” travel without alcohol during travel.
It is expected to be a trend in 2024 to detox and enjoy travel without drinking alcohol while traveling.
Although many people enjoy drinking alcohol as one of the best parts of traveling, some people take non-alcoholic trips because they can “control themselves and be in a good state of mind and body” by skipping alcohol on vacation.
Alcohol-free menus are being introduced more and more at hotels and restaurants in travel destinations as the number of users seeking non-alcoholic drinks increases.
The Hotel bar in Tokyo where you can enjoy non-alcoholic beverages
Grand Hyatt Tokyo：Enjoy mocktails (non-alcoholic cocktails) conceived by bartenders in a luxurious hotel setting.
Atmosphere-driven Hotel Selection
Fifth, it was announced that the trend is to choose accommodations based on atmosphere.
Many people choose a place to stay based on the number of stars, facilities, and services offered. However, according to a survey by Expedia, the number of people using the word “vibe” in reviews on travel websites has increased by 1090% compared to the previous year.
The three main search terms used were “calm atmosphere,” “modern atmosphere,” and “resort atmosphere.
And “an atmosphere where you can enjoy nature” was the most common search among Japanese.
As a side note, the word “emoi,” which is used to describe “a good atmosphere and fashionable. The word “emoi,” which means “cool” in Japanese, has become extremely popular in Japan. Since then, there is a tendency in Japan for emo guys to be popular. Oh, how I wish I could have been an emo guy!
Why don’t you choose your accommodation for your trip in 2024 by focusing on the atmosphere?
Itinerary Planning by Generated AI
The sixth and final trend is travel using generative AI, which is attracting a lot of attention around the world today.
The idea is to have a generative AI plan your itinerary, which is something that encourages humans to stop thinking.
But the generative AI is quite good, and it seems to be able to plan trips with outrageous ideas and quirky things that others can’t come up with.
There is too much information out there. It is difficult to decide where to go and where to stay.
But if you ask AI, it may provide you with places and methods that you didn’t know existed.
I have a feeling that this will become more and more popular in the future.
For me personally, this was the most intriguing travel trend of 2024.
2024 Travel Trend Summary
In this issue, we introduced you to “Unpack’24”, a travel trend for 2024 announced by Expedia Group.
Did you get anything out of it as a new travel idea?
We hope you can use this article to enhance your travel in 2024.
Thank you very much for your time!
✔Click here for the Expedia 2024 trend forecast article that we referred to in this article.
