New holiday tribes

Film-location junkies, veteran Interrailers, resort lovers: categorising travellers has become a complex social science. Which crews do you recognise?

After three years of ‘constrained’ travel, we’re finally ready and able to globetrot once more. Nearly a quarter of us are hoping to take two holidays in 2023, according to a recent survey, with 61 per cent citing holidays as ‘essential to their mental wellbeing’.

Less cheerfully, travel prices have risen sharply. Doom specialist Which? reports that costs of breaks in Italy, Spain and other southern European favourites are up by at least a fifth – and flight prices for popular spots by 71 per cent .

But it’s not putting us off: 2023 is set to be the year of the you-only-live-once holiday (AKA ‘sod-it splurge’): a single exorbitant trip justified by all the ones missed due to Covid. Saving strategies include multigenerational family holidays, courtesy of the bank of

Gran and Grandad; ‘boomerang holidays’ (booking the same break as last year to avoid expensive disappointment); and cheaper, ‘undiscovered’ destinations, hot tickets being Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania.

Of course, one of the greatest pleasures of travel remains people-watching. We’ve rounded up the tribes you can expect to encounter at check-in this year…

TRAIN TROTTERS

Rail buffs comprise two factions: Gen Z passengers who have taken a no-fly pledge on principle; and Baby Boomers keen to relive their Interrail years. What they share is an obsession with new routes in Europe (extra points if it’s an overnighter) and a slow-lane fetish. City breaks are booked on the basis of easy routes (so Basel trumps Barcelona), with the new London-Berlin sleeper igniting much fervour.

Spot them at the station buying a mug that says ‘Life is a journey, not a destination’ while waiting for a delayed train at a remote stop.

PROGRESSIVE PILGRIMS

Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain has become the hot destination among midlife women (Linda Barker is a fan). With its twin lures of spiritual enlightenment and glute-sculpting, pilgrimaging is having a distinctly Goop moment. Typically tackled by a gang of girlfriends (not unlike that

2003 hen weekend in Lanzarote, minus the stripper), the trek will provide hours of chat after two decades in the parenting trenches. No devotion required – according to The Path of Peace, Anthony Seldon’s latest book, the pilgrimage is about ‘reviving purpose and zeal’. Spot them at the airport stuffing hand luggage with relics on the way home; Gen X worships at the altar of kitsch.

CLUB ‘OUT-OF-OFFICE’

Pre-2020 it was all about the family gap year (that wildly smug trend for shipping the brood to Bali for a whole academic year) and the midlife sabbatical (think Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love). Post-Covid, nobody can afford an entire year off. Accordingly, the new status symbol is a month-long mega-trip.

This may be even longer if the jetsetter in question identifies as a digital nomad, the holy grail being the hibernation holiday – in other words, migrating to St Lucia to hole up between January and March.

Spot them in the airport en route to the business class lounge, crowing loudly about how

‘packing for a month is actually no different to a week’.

ALL-INCLUSIVE APOLOGISTS

This tribe is distinctive for its sheepishness. The issue? The apologist identifies as ‘a city-break person’, and fears they will be judged by their friends for spending a week in one resort in Cyprus. Thus they feel compelled to justify their recent or upcoming package holiday. Excuses will range from ‘It just made sense with the kids,’ to ‘It’s actually a really beautiful landscape,’ and shamefaced references to ‘a good deal’. Rarely will the apologist confess a preference for buffets over ancient monuments. Everyone has some pride.

Spot them at the airport looking furtive in the Ryanair queue, wearing hats and sunglasses in the hope that they don’t bump into anyone they know.

NETFLIX NOMADS

For these (invariably millennial) couples, all travel is based on cult Netflix or HBO dramas – most notably The White Lotus and Emily in Paris, although Borgen and Tokyo Vice may provide #travelinspo. The Netflix nomad will spend an entire holiday snapping hotel and restaurant décor – #interiorsinspo for when they get home – and taking selfies at as-seen-on-screen locations. Not to be confused with ‘booking a villa in Majorca because it looks like the one in Love Island’. Spot them at the airport checked in for Sicily – and browsing Reiss for a white cutout dress like the one Harper wore in The White

Lotus (season two).