The Top Travel Trends That Will Define 2025 by Mia Taylor

Purpose and Practice

In 2025, more travelers will engage in travel as a “results-driven lifestyle practice,” says Haupert. In other words, travel will become a practice ot all that unlike yoga, meditation, or fitness programs that help us improve our physical, emotional, and spiritual health.

“This year, travelers will gain a deeper appreciation for travel and its potential for growth and healing in our lives while emphasizing the 'why and how' over the 'what and where,' which uncovers their sense of purpose and brings more intention and a growth mindset to their travel practice,” explains Haupert.

This shift from the experience to the transformation economy cultivates benefits and outcomes that are deep and enduring, not just skill development or shifting perspectives, but finding more connection, calm, clarity, and confidence in our lives, Haupert suggested.

Meanwhile, tourism organizations and destinations adopting an experience development strategy to meet this emerging demand, will thrive. 

Communing and Cooperation

With over-tourism continuing to diminish travel's potential for good, communities will solve the problem from within by coming together to connect, commune, and collaborate in revitalizing their attitude and approach to travel. This will include putting their people, place, and planet at the center of tourism strategies, says Haupert.

“This recommitment to unifying around shared values and vision for their home will spur a sense of purpose and a truer essence of place that will attract a more mindful traveler,” Haupert explains. “Destinations shifting from the old co-mpetition mindset to one of cooperation will become more future-fit, healthier, more caring, resilient, and conscious today and tomorrow. “

Human Intelligence and Pilgrimages

With all the energy swirling around the present and future of AI, from dystopian nightmares to its otherworldly potential for good, one thing is for certain: being human will never be more important or more beautiful, says Haupert.

“So we must relink with our HI - our Human Intelligence,” Hauper explains. “Sadly, far too many of us can't slow down enough to unplug our minds and tether to our souls. This reality has led to more people being on pilgrimage last year than any in our history."

In 2025, Haupert predicts those numbers will continue to rise.

“A pilgrim travels with an innate desire to go home, to find their way back to themselves, their human nature, which brings about more peace and prosperity in their lives and those around them,” says Haupert.