Year of anti-social travel
Josh Martin looks at 2019 trends for travellers and discovers that social media show-offs and their enablers may be out of luck.
In 2018, we witnessed kneeachingly long flights, ever-larger cruise vessels and more people travelling globally than ever before.
Thankfully the number of people dragged off airlines did not reach the shameful heights of 2017.
Travel and tourism is a mega industry obsessed with trends and the ‘‘Next Big Thing’’ as well as one that offers niches, sub-tribes and weird anomalies.
Here’s what 2019 may have in store for the travelling Kiwi:
Over-capacity (that’s industry speak for too many seats on offer) on leisure routes, higher fuel prices and increasingly shaky consumer confidence pushed some – mostly European – airlines to the wall in 2018, while many others came close.
Although the main players flying the New Zealand skies look more than sound, the macroeconomic conditions and often razor-thin margins of global aviation remain. All the more reason to have comprehensive travel cover on your next big European trip. It’s no longer about million-count Egyptian cotton sheets on California super-king beds for the one-per-centers and the wannabe one-per-centers. We want customised, personal and (mostlikely) ‘‘shareable’’ experiences. Think heli-transfers, Michelinstarred chef cooking lessons and F1 racer driving lessons.
Travel is now even more of a status symbol, so the top tier especially demands hotels, cruise companies and travel service firms make their stay more about what they get to do and how they do it, rather than about things (although top-branded toiletries and top-shelf minibars never hurt).