Want to know the top tourism trends for 2024? If you’re in business, particularly hospitality or tourism, knowing what’s coming up and what’s going to be trendy in the tourist and travel sector can be important for your business and allow you to take the opportunity and make the most of things for the coming year.
So today I’m going to show you what the Victorian Tourism and Information Council showed us at a recent conference and hopefully help you prepare for a super 2024.
- Digital Nomads
So the first trend is digital nomads. COVID really changed the way people work. Now it’s possible to work from anywhere in the world, and businesses are jumping on board and taking advantage and embracing it. This has lead to countries jump on board as well. So a number of countries that now offer a specific digital nomad visa. You can see here, popular ones include Barcelona in Spain, Malta, Croatia, and then some areas in South America as well, like Colombia and Brazil.
Working remotely is a real lifestyle. You can see these people enjoy a beautiful climate, which is quite affordable to live in. People from all over the world are digital nomads. You’ll notice though, that Australia currently doesn’t offer a digital nomad visa. However, that doesn’t mean that we don’t have a bunch of digital nomads here. In fact we have nearly a million. There’s 900,000 digital nomads in Australia at the moment, which is something that you can really take advantage of. And there’s predicted to be a billion digital nomads by 2035 across the world. So there’s a huge opportunity here.
So you can take advantage of this if you offer accommodation or hospitality services. People in this market really need connectivity, great internet, because they’re working remotely. And along with that, work add-ons like access to computers, workstations, printers, those kind of things. People that are staying as a digital nomad might be staying for the medium term, longer than the usual night or two. They might stay weeks or they might stay a couple of months and that could be a really good opportunity for you.
Make sure you have set up those kind of facilities and that you promote it. If you have great internet you need to say it. You can’t assume that people will know or just because we’re in Australia people have great internet. That’s not always the case.
2. Multi-Generational Travel
Next up is multi-generational travel. Multi-generational travel really just means more than one generation of families travelling together. So, whereas you might have had parents and young children together in the past, now you will see grandparents come along, cousins and other family groups travelling together. People are really embracing it as a chance for them to come together and connect, whilst enjoying a holiday at the same time.
Between 33 and 40% of the leisure travel industry is now multi-generational. Family bookings are up more than 50% compared to pre-COVID. And people that are part of this trend tend to do it more than once. You’ll see here 75% of people who take a multi-generational trip will do it again. It’s also more common amongst particular cultures. In Australia and in Victoria, we have a lot of Chinese visitors and a lot of Indian visitors. These groups love to travel in families.
So what do these multi-generational travellers want? They want things to be easy, inclusive, and family friendly. So in terms of ease, people that travel in a group often just want the one bill. They don’t need to be able to split bills. But they want things packaged really neatly. So perhaps multi-night packages, meals included, or activities and tours as simple add-ons. This can make things really easy for them because they’re traveling together. They also want things that are accessible, from kids to the elderly that may have mobility issues. So keep that in mind.
3. Retirees
And last up we’ve got the retirees. In Australia we have an aging population right? By 2050, 25% of the whole population is going to be aged over 65. So we really are an aging population. Retirees did stop traveling through COVID because they were quite concerned about illness. But that has changed. They’ve jumped back into travel. They’re really excited about it. The number of people traveling has jumped more than 80% in the last three years.
This market have a lot of money to spend and that’s what makes them a really valuable segment to target. They’re looking for big holidays, both domestic and overseas. But if you’ve served boomer customers, you know, they can be quite different from millennial customers. They have the money to spend but they have specific ideas about value and value exchange. That might be in the form of really high quality stuff or it might be in the form of really great service. They’re generally quite relaxed travellers, they’re not pressured for time.
So how can you welcome retirees into your venue? They’ve got money to spend, but they’re looking for quality and they’re looking for service.
So that’s it for the top three 2024 tourism trends in Victoria and in Australia. I’d love to know what you think, which trends you’re likely to consider, what you’re going to do to attract these markets. Good luck for a great 2024!