Revisiting the travel trends for 2025 - how did we do?
At the start of the year, Amadeus revealed five trends which it predicted would influence the industry in 2025. Ten months in, how close has Amadeus come to getting it right? Contributing editor Martin Cowen takes a look.
My blog post assessing 2024’s trends generated quite a few comments, drove discussion, ruffled some feathers, which is exactly what trends are meant to do. So how are Amadeus’ predictions for 2025 standing up so far? My assessment is a slight improvement on last year – three distinctions, one merit, one pass.
Distinction #1: Asia Uplift
Unlike the other trends, the resurgence of travel to and from Asia is more quantitative than qualitative, and if we look at the stats for 2025 travel so far then this prediction is a success. Chinese inbound volumes for the first three months of the year came in at just over 35 million, up nearly 20%, and this is set to soar yet higher after the Chinese government announced in July it was extending visa-free entry to travelers from 74 countries.
Elsewhere in the region, some Indonesian outbound agents are expecting a 30% year-on-year growth in 2025 based on their performance so far.
Longer-term indicators are also positive. A recent WEF report suggested that by 2030 Indian and Chinese travelers will account for more 25% share of total international trips. Japan has its eye on growing its cruise market to 1 million by 2030. WTTC believes tourism will account for more than 20% of the Philippines GDP by the same year.
The short-, medium- and long-term trajectory, for inbound, outbound and domestic, is strong. It will be interesting to see how the APAC uplift reshapes a global travel industry which has been structured for and dominated by businesses and travelers from North America and Europe.
Distinction #2: Connections IRL (in real life)
Does the shared experience of standing in a crowd of 100,000 people, singing along in unison to Champagne Supernova, count as a real-life connection? Is it more or less valid a human connection than a private tour of the Sofia Reina, or an urban beekeeping experience in New York with like-minded apiarists?
Connections are everywhere in travel: immediate and extended families can connect through intergenerational trips; girls’ weekends and lads-on-tour allow friends to connect in a different context. Most group travel is about connecting (and while it’s out of scope here, isn’t business travel all about connecting face-to-face?)
Interestingly, and counter-intuitively, the trends report frames its connections section in the context of solo travelers and singletons. The report says that online dating is losing its appeal, and people are turning to travel as a way to “escape the burnout of endless swiping and shallow online interactions” and to meet like-minded people. Their escape is facilitated by suppliers, from cruise lines to hotels, becoming more supportive of solo travelers by flexing their product and pricing to accommodate individuals and to encourage interactions.
Whether its connecting as part of a shared experience, connecting as part of a small group, or connecting as an individual to another individual, face-to-face real-life engagement is and will continue to be important for many travelers.
Distinction #3: Personalized flying
Over a decade ago I had an unintentionally brief six-week stint as editor-in-chief for APEX – the Airline Passenger Experience Association. At the time, one of the hot topics (hotter than seat design, hotter than carpets) was the future of seat-back IFE systems (inflight entertainment) when airlines were starting to kit out their planes with wifi.
Fast forward to today, and the conversation is now about personalizing the in-flight experience. Wifi is now commonplace among full-service carriers, with innovation-driven new entrants such as Starlink supporting high-speed access via its network of low earth orbit satellites. Virgin Atlantic recently announced a tie-up with Starlink to provide “streaming quality, gate to gate connectivity in all cabins”.
The momentum is building, driven by tech innovations. Looking ahead, as per the trends report, “some airlines are upping the ante by combining algorithmic entertainment with hyper-personalized inflight systems that deliver box-fresh content tailored to the individual flyer, based on their historic preferences…”
Catering is another aspect of the flight which can be personalized, to an extent, although the trigger for this happens in advance of the flight itself, usually by pre-ordering options via the airline’s app. And on the simplest level, choosing an aisle or window seat is a way to personalize the flight experience.
This trend for personalized flying aligns perfectly with the industry’s obsession with personalization at every touchpoint. Passengers can watch what they want on their own devices, in time the seat-back screen (now in 4K) will have an entire back-catalogue of options chosen specifically for me, based on preferences.
One area to note, however, is that if the airline or its partner can curate my IFE options according to preferences, it can also use those preferences for targeted advertising.
Merit: Trailblazer hotels
The trends report says that “trailblazer hotels are becoming destinations in their own right” – which, to me, sounds a lot like what used to be known as “destination hotels”.
What is new, as the report says, is that many mainstream chains are getting in on the act and developing properties that are intended to rival what boutique hotel chains have traditionally offered – “not just a place to stay, but an experience that resonates with the local culture and offers a unique narrative…”
Examples of trailblazer / destination hotels include the Hard Rock Hotels’ Reverb Hamburg, converted from a German wartime bunker, and the Admiralty Arch Hotel, which Hilton will open as a Waldorf Astoria in 2026, a conversion of the eponymous London landmark.
There are still many people for whom staying in a specific trailblazer hotel is the reason for travel, and there is a cachet of sorts to staying somewhere new and/or unique. But this trend seems out of synch with the excitement around experiences, with many travelers prioritising what they will experience on the trip rather than where they will stay.
Even if a traveler wants to experience staying in a wartime bunker, then that doesn’t mean they will want to spend all their time on site (especially in Hamburg). Perhaps a compromise for trailblazer hotels would be to pair the hotel stay with appropriate trips, tours or activities. If I am staying in a wartime bunker, am I also interested in military history? Military architecture? Or maybe I’m interested in seeing other examples of adaptive reuse architecture.
Pass: New heydays
I am only giving this a pass, not because I think it’s wide of the mark in a travel trends context, but because I think we as a species we have a problem with “rosy retrospection”. It seems we cannot look back on the past without getting sentimental, and for sentimental, read unrealistic.
Life was not necessarily “better” or “worse” in the 70s/80s/90s – it was “different”, and I would argue that it was in fact worse. The new millennium saw Web 1.0 change how many of us live our lives, before the smartphone changed how most of us live our lives. It is a deep philosophical question – has the internet made our lives better? With obvious caveats, I think it has. A similar question is already starting to be asked about artificial intelligence. I’ll get back to you on this.
In terms of travel, rose-tinted spectacles blinds us to the reality of what travel was like only a few decades ago. I challenge anyone to say that they miss smoking on airplanes, or travelers’ cheques, or brochures.
But there are enough travelers out there – and enough data points - to justify a market for nostalgia tourism, mainly for Gen Z and Millennials whose childhood travel reference points are probably less grim than what the Boomers and Gen Xer’s went through.
Final thoughts
It’s difficult to come up with five concepts to predict what might happen over the next twelve months in a global industry with billions of customers. With so many travel companies also making predictions, what sets the Amadeus travel trends apart is their link to technology.
Trends come and go; some become established, others fizzle out. In a sector with such a rich tapestry, there is more than enough room for multiple travel trends to co-exist. And with 2026 almost here, the next phase of future-gazing is almost upon us. Look out for the new Amadeus Travel Trends 2026 report, which is being published on 3 December 2025.
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