Emerging Travel Trends for 2025

Welcome to Travel Buddy

In this exciting episode of the Travel Buddy podcast by Switchfly, we explore emerging travel trends for 2025 with special guests Ashley Martinez and Rachel Satow. They discuss how artificial intelligence and technology are reshaping travel planning and personalization. From innovative travel tech like neighborhood insights to the rise of domestic travel and conscious tourism, this episode offers valuable insights for travelers looking to stay ahead of the curve. Whether you're a seasoned globe-trotter or planning your next adventure, gain practical tips on leveraging AI and new technologies for a more immersive travel experience.

Key Highlights

• Exploration of how AI is transforming travel planning for personalized trip experiences.
• Insight into the growing trend of domestic travel alongside international journeys.
• Discussion on conscious travel, emphasizing eco-friendly and immersive experiences. 
• Overview of unique travel experiences, including literature travel and astro tourism.
• Tips on utilizing AI and VR tools to discover lesser-known locations and experiences.

Quotes

• "AI is no longer just a tool; it's become a fundamental aspect of travel planning." – Rachel Satow
• "There's been a real rise in conscious travel, impacting both eco-friendly choices and the immersive experience travelers seek." – Ashley Martinez

Transcript

Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Travel Buddy podcast. Today I have two special guests, so I want them to introduce themselves, but we're gonna be talking about emerging travel trends for 2025, and we may touch on a really fun. Conde Nast, uh, article. We'll see if we have some time because it's got some fun little, uh, travel trends in there.

Anyway, uh, so Ashley, Rachel, thank you so much for joining me on this episode. I'd love for you guys to, in, uh, introduce yourselves because, uh, Ashley, you have been on the show before. Rachel, you have not. So let's refresh everybody to, uh, make sure that we know who we're talking to. So, Ashley, I'll start with you.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and, uh, and why you're on the show today.

Thanks Brandon. I am so happy to be back on travel, buddy. I have a background in travel technology and I'm actually a travel advisor on the side, so I'm very active in the travel planning. Um, travel Trends community, so I'm excited to dive in that, uh, into that today.

Awesome. Thanks so much, Rachel. How about you? Please introduce yourself.

Hi. Thank you for having me. I'm super excited for this very first, uh, travel buddy episode. Um. I'm the senior marketing strategist at Switch Fly. I joined the team about six months ago and I have a little bit of a history working in the travel industry and working with clients in the travel industry in particular.

Um, so I'm very excited to chat through 2025 trends.

Very cool. Very cool. So glad you both are on the show today.  So the very first, uh, segment of the show is on travel tech and personalization. So of course everybody is talking about ai. Everyone is talking about how tech can either, you know, mass produce something or.  Be hyper targeted, personal just for you because of a lot of these new technologies that are coming out, travel is not immune to that trend.

So, uh, one way to picture this.  Is that there are many ways, uh, to, you know, Google where you want to go in your destination or you see some Instagram feed of someplace that looks marvelous and you see these beautiful photos and sometimes those photos don't exactly match to reality and you don't really get a sense of what else the city might be.

Look like because you're really just getting like a highlight reel. But there are some new technologies that are coming out and new ways of kind of researching a, a trip and where you want to go, where you can preview locations, you can do some deep dives on hotels or see where there's situated, uh, within different, um, districts or neighborhoods.

And then there's things like neighborhood insights that can give you a better feel for the overall picture. So I'm wondering if, if you two, I don't know who to start with, maybe Rachel, uh, Rachel, if you could talk to me a little bit about that, um, that kind of sensation of you're, you know, doing some research on, um, a trip and you can use some of these new technologies to figure out, get a better picture of where you're trying to go.

So talk to me a little bit about that and um, and give us a sense of how people are using these tools in their, their research.

Sure. So I think it changes based on who we're actually talking about here. So from the technology side, it's going to look very different how AI comes into play than from a traveler's perspective. Um. I mean, it's, no, it's no surprise that AI is here to stay. I think that that one's pretty obvious, but, um, from a traveler's perspective, we're seeing everything from.

Using it to plan your trip, using it to ask questions about where certain things would be within, you know, the proximity of their hotel. Really kind of seeing that shift from just utilizing Google and that resource and now it's utilizing chat, GPT, et cetera, um, to kind of fill in the gaps and, and have a more expedited experience in their travel planning.

Um. And without knowing those travel, those travelers are interacting oftentimes with ai. So when we think about it from a tech perspective, um, our software in particular at Switch Fly, you know, we released Neighborhood Insights last year, late last year, which is using Gen AI to.  Um, to, to showcase neighborhoods, recommended neighborhoods, recommend recommended hotels in the area where they may be searching.

Um, just trying to expedite how people are really able to plan their trip overall, um, and have the best experience possible. So it's no shock that we're seeing jet AI come in the shape of.  Enhancing features that already exist, but also in the shape of  generating brand new features that didn't exist before.

That's great. So Ashley, you are, uh, helping people actually book these. These kind of trips. As a travel advisor, can you talk to me a little bit about what you're seeing using these tools or how you're doing research maybe for clients or as you're booking, like how is that going?

Yeah, absolutely. AI is great as chat. GBT especially, I used to leverage to. Really bridge the gap on logistics. So as you mentioned earlier, there definitely is a difference between Instagram and reality. One, um, that comes to mind is the beautiful towns of Chica Terra outside Florence. On Instagram, you might see all these beautiful pictures, but from a logistics standpoint, there are actually these towns that are built on the side of a mountain.

So how do you actually get there? Right? So bridging the gap with logistics and how do I actually get to these places? Um, chat, GBT in particular has been a great resource. On that front, I think, not only for current travels, but where I've really seen the opportunity for travel technology and especially leveraging, um, machine learning, um, models and AI is for future travel trips.

So, hey, my clients, they really had a great experience. That's, you know, maybe a family of four. They love this hotel that was on the beach. How can I create a similar experience or a similar positive experience moving forward? So at Switch Fly, we are doing this based on, um, anonym, uh, anonymized models.

We're using travel trends and booking data to leverage, Hey, a lot of people are, um, searching for this destination and giving those personalized recommendations to, to, um, enhance future travel trips as well.

Okay, great. So what I'm hearing from from both of you is that there are these tools that are able. To personalize your experience but also work out the kinks of actually traveling to these destinations. I think Chitter is a great example of that. I haven't been, my wife studied abroad in Florence and she's always wanted me to go see that place 'cause she loved it so much.

But then I think about having a toddler and scaling up these mountains in between these little towns and it takes, you know, hours to get around all of them. And it sounds miserable, but I wanna figure out how to do it. So thank you that, I think that's such a great example of using these, these tools to do that.

Um, but yeah, so, so then it's like you, you see, you can kind of maybe narrow down the field of where you'd like to travel and get a more realistic picture. Um, but then you get these recommendations maybe based on those selections or based on those criteria that travelers might have, whether they're going to a particular city or how they're getting there, or things like that.

Um, and that leads to, uh, part two of our conversation talking about.  Different trends that Travelers have, uh, based on these kind of recommendations or based on these criteria, based on, uh, how the gen gen ai, uh, tools are like helping them just navigate and, and make decisions about this, this sort of thing.

So one of the trends that you guys mentioned before we started recording is that domestic travel. Is growing. Uh, is that, is that what I understood? So it's a, it's a growing trend and people are booking more local domestic trips rather than international. So talk to me a little bit about that. What is going on with this trend?

What are you seeing? Why is that the case? And then we can dive in.

I am happy to take this one. Um, I wouldn't necessarily say that it's growing and replacing international travel. I think individuals are, we're seeing a trend in domestic travel for a slew of reasons, but particularly it's, it's growing in tandem with international travel. And when we think about the reasons on why that's really happening is, you know.

COVID-19, I think actually spurred a lot of curiosity regarding the, the, the areas in our backyard. Um. I know for me in particular, there was a lot of the United States that I had never traveled to before. And without that capability of being able to really travel internationally during the pandemic, it spurred my curiosity of like, where can I go?

That's, you know, not too far, but far enough that I get removed from my day to day and what can I see that's, that's right outside my front door. Um, so we're seeing that momentum from Covid to 19 and the pandemic, um, really keep.  Up domestic travel, but there's also a lot of trends in regards to bringing your furry friend along.

And many, many millennials in particular are making decisions of where they are going based on if they can bring their pets and international travel. Obviously that's a lot harder to bring your pet along. Um, so they're. They're leaning into domestic travel because of that. The other side of it is obviously sustainability.

You know, taking these grandiose, international long-term, uh, trips can, you know, have a, not, I don't wanna say a negative non connotation, but it can have an assumed higher carbon footprint. Than if I were to just drive to the next state and see something that is, you know, nearby that stands out a little bit more.

So sustainability and some of that responsive travel is coming into, um, into play here as well. Um, just simply because, you know, things that exist within our own countries often, you know, we don't explore them as much, but it seems that people are, are definitely taking an interest there.

Interesting. I, I wonder too if there's some demographics involved. And as you were talking, I was thinking about a group of friends, uh, that we all love to travel together. Every year we try to plan a trip. There's six of us. Well, in the last two years we've had three children between the six of us and two of the couples are pregnant.

And this year, you know, having more kids, so there's gonna be five kids total. And we were just talking this weekend at a gender reveal party for one of them, and we were thinking, where do we want to go in the future? And we're like, can you imagine lugging five kids to like France or Italy or you know, somewhere in western Europe, which is typically where we like to travel.

Uh, and that sounds.  Difficult to say the least. So we're thinking like, okay, maybe we can like drive to Colorado, which I've never been to Colorado. Maybe I should check that out. Um, but yeah, I'm wondering if that's like, like pets and like maybe the sustainability mixed in, there's some demographics that might be involved in kind of pushing some trends in that direction.

Absolutely.

Ashley, what about you? What, what kind of trends are, are you seeing? Do you, do you see the kind of thing that Rachel's talking about with this more domestic travel and maybe some reasons behind that or, uh, some of the sustainability comments, things like that. Like when, when you're talking with your clients and working through things, do you hear that that kind of, uh, emphasis on domestic travel?

I really think it's all in the same vein of the rise of the conscious traveler. So whether that's being conscious of my e, my global carbon footprint, whether that's conscious of who I'm traveling with, maybe I'm traveling with elderly or like as you mentioned, Brandon, with kids. But I really think there.

Travelers are putting an emphasis on one, having immersive experiences. At the end of the day, you're traveling to experience a new, a new place. And so when you are truly immersing yourself, you also have to put yourself, um, when you, when you immerse also, how am I consciously impacting the place that I'm in vi visiting?

Am I, am, I'm, if I'm visiting a remote destination, a. In the Philippines, for example, there's a really popular destination in the Philippines to go visit a, she's an amazing a hundred year old tattoo artist. There's been a really rise of travel or tourism to that destination, but then that's led to over tour, over tourism.

To that destination. So what are all the things, all the trash that I'm bringing, all of the tourism to that place, how am I impacting the destination that I'm going to? So I think there's been a real rise in conscious travel. This has translated to the rise of eco-friendly resorts, green practices within hotels  and accommodations, also transportation, taking public transportation.

You know, how can I, um, reduce my carbon footprint in the places that I'm traveling to.

I like that phrase conscious. Conscious tourism, conscious travel. I think that's, I think that's true. I hear that a lot of, uh, like I'm just thinking of, of Hawaii. I had some friends that went to Hawaii and they were talking about the.  You know, the disparity, if you wanna call it that between locals and then tourists and how it kind of just sets up this kind of social tension, cultural tension, if I can call it that.

But also, um, your point about experiences I think is, is really useful.  And that makes me think of this Conde Nat article. I know we are, we're hoping to circle back in that direction. But I, but I, what I like about this article is it talks about some of those trends that you were talking about, like experiences like visiting in the Philippines, a a hundred year old, um, tattoo artist.

I.  The, there's some other ones and I just wanna, I just wanna list them off just so listeners like, can get a sense of how, especially if I could say younger travelers are thinking about the way that they wanna spend their vacations and things like that. So this is just the top few  that is, uh, literature travel to avoid brain rott.

So the headline is, travel Gets Lit. So people are carrying around books or they're, they're going to places in books that they've, they've read before. There's Astrocartography. So if you've ever wondered about how your horoscope plays into your life and the different ways that you can, uh, you know how the planets were aligned on your particular birth date, a birth hour, and you can go visit that place.

There's, uh, long honeymoons becoming a thing, which I think is interesting because you can now work where if you wanted to go travel remotely, there's her story lessons through women's museums. There's, uh, supper clubs that you can go visit in Tokyo. Um, there's just all these different trends. There's, I think, 21 trends mentioned in this article.

But I bring it up to give some, some kind of concreteness to some of these experiential travel that you're talking about. So I'm curious from, from both of you, uh, what do y'all think about some of those? Do you have some in mind that you've heard of from friends or trends on Instagram or just like different things that you've seen where that's actually a really great idea or that's really interesting that people are using travel to do that.

From my side, I would definitely recommend if you are interested in having a literary journey going to Porto. In Portugal, they have one of the most beautiful libraries in the world, and it's a very literary city. So that one resonated with me personally, but I also think. Yeah, no, I, um, Porto and then there's an incredible library in Prague as well, so that, that's a definitely, um, would, would fit the bill.

But I think in terms of travel trends, one of the other ones that resonated me with was this idea of a supper club. I at heart am a foodie, and so I think that goes hand in hand with traveling and cultural immersion is really the food. Of a destination. And so I've seen definitely a rise in food oriented travel trips or planning around a cuisine.

I think the bringing it full circle for me, chat, GPT and other AI resources have been a great way to find those local recommendations of restaurants and where can I get really unique local? Food. Not necessarily, well, let's call 'em, um, this might have tourist traps per se, but where can I, where do the locals eat?

And so I think that's, so I important and that's definitely some of the trends that I'm seeing,

You know, you bring up an interesting, you know, uh, thought about the tourist traps. One of the trends

that we

that we see is  people are trying to go off the beaten path. They, they're traveling to places. And when we think about domestic travel, this kind of leads into that too. We're, we're seeing a rise in people going places where it isn't a tourist trap necessarily.

It's not the most popular city and the most popular country that they're going to. They're opting for more unique experiences. And to tie it back to, to the trends you were mentioning, um, you know, when we think about  astro tourism, um, and astrological tourism, you know. We see a lot of different travelers making decisions based on the unique experiences that they can, they can have in certain places and only in those certain places.

So if you think about, you know, when the solar eclipse happened, there was this a, a massive, massive surge in travel into places people don't really normally go to. And it's all because. These are once in a lifetime experiences, and I think when we think about the, the, you know, experiential travel that is going to continue to grow when people travel, they are going to be searching for the once in a lifetime opportunities and they're not going to necessarily.

Want to, to go to the most common spots. They want to say, look at this amazing trip that was so unique to me and look at how these, the hotel personalized the, the room when we got there for our specific anniversary or our birthday, et cetera. They're looking for these very unique experiences for sure.

Yeah, I can definitely resonate with that because. I think there's so many places that you could go, but I think I'm a millennial, so I'm 34.  And I feel this like burden to, to want to, to do things with my limited time on earth that like is so unique and interesting because yes, I could go to Paris and I could go on the Sean  where everybody else goes and I could get.

Dinner there, and I did one time and it was not very good. So I want to, I want to go to these like less known spots that are not the tourist traps kind of on the off the beaten path a little bit. Um, because you do find these like really rich, interesting, unique experiences, but to, to our point at the top of the hour or the top of the show was these tools that are available to us now, we can actually find these things a lot more quickly.

Yeah. And so I'm curious if, if you guys have used these, these tools, um, some that are off the beaten path that you've seen or things that you've done, like maybe in your research or maybe thinking about different things that, like you thought of this really unique, uh, kind of spot in, in travel that you wouldn't have found if it weren't for an AI tool or, or some other kind of like new tech tool.

So great example, Ashley, what you said about Porto having this great library.  I would love to, to know if there's like this thing that you wouldn't have found otherwise. Uh, if it weren't for a, a tool like that, you know, it's a great library or a great museum or, um, I don't know, a restaurant or something like that.

Ashley, have you, have you seen anything like that that's come up in your research? I.

Absolutely. I think the best prompts, or I guess advice if I could give to Travelers trying to leverage these tools is use previous experiences or as much context as possible. So when I am looking for a restaurant that. Serves this local cuisine. Um, I've been to this place, but I'm, you know, and I really liked it.

Can you gimme a recommendation on another? That's where I found it to be as super useful using those, uh. Giving as much context as possible and giving prompts. I think definitely for my clients, I, you know, when you think about, you gave an example of traveling to Paris to thee.  If anyone's going to France, probably they're gonna recommend to go to the Eiffel Tower.

I would for my clients and, and I would leveraging AI tools. Say I'm, I have clients, they're a family of four. How can they see the Eiffel Tower in a very family friendly way? So it's not just seeing the Eiffel Tower, but maybe it's they're bringing a picnic and they're going to sit outside the Eiffel Tower.

Or if it's someone who's more adventurous, maybe they wanna climb the Eiffel Tower. So I think giving a prompt that says, I am, you know, an adventurous type of traveler, how can I see this in the best way possible? That's, you know, personal to me.

It's real easy. You take your family to the bottom of the Eiffel Tower, you pay $3 million, and you wait in line for like four hours. You take an elevator and you go up,

Right,

which you can't do with a toddler. It's a little bit harder.  Um, Rachel, how about you? Have you, what, uh, kind of interesting, you know, local experiences or different things have you seen in, in your research?

So I'm, I'm more of an adventure traveler myself. Um, and a lot of the planning that I personally do revolves around where can I find the me best mountain biking trail. Um, so  a lot of time, uh, my personal experience with using ai, there was a trip that we were doing, um, we do an annual trip. For a week in August to celebrate my significant other's birthday.

And we do essentially car camping the entire time. And what we were able to do, we had some, some chosen spots that we had done before, but we wanted to kind of jazz it up a little bit and say, Hey, is there a camping spot that we hadn't necessarily done before? And so we utilized AI to provide us with a general, um, a general loop essentially of.

Out and back, where can we go all the way through the southeast? Um, and said, Hey, where we, where could we find camping that allows for us to either car camp or for us to camp with a tent? And then how close in proximity is it to specific mountain biking trails? Of course. Um, and it came up with quite a few, but one of my favorite options was it actually gave us a su uh, a suggestion on the way back home.

Um. A couple of miles off of our normal, our normal route, um, to see the Grand Canyon of Georgia, um, which is Providence Canyon State Park. And it's really cool where, um, there had been some agricultural practices that caused these canyons to, to.  Just in the middle of Georgia. Um, and it looks like the Grand Canyon when you're there.

So we wouldn't have found out about it if it weren't for, for ai kind of recommending that, hey, take a, take a couple miles the other way and, and you can see this really unique thing.

Interesting. I'm from Georgia and I've never even heard of this.

Well, there you go.

I'm not a good Georgian.  Interesting. Okay. Cool. Yeah, I love that. Those are great. Those are great. Uh, okay. Any closing thoughts or, or any kind of, uh, other ideas that have surfaced during this conversation or in your research to, to prep for our talk?

Like anything that's come to mind that you, you think listeners should know about thinking about 2025 travel trends?

I think it just being conscious and. If there's an opportunity to leverage these travel technologies and AI tools, not just beforehand when you're planning your trip, but also while you're traveling to create more personal experiences. Say, Hey, I have an extra, you know, couple hours. What can I do with my time to make sure, make sure, or ensure that you're having the most immersive experience as possible.

Cool. I love that.

Um, one thing we didn't really talk about, and this goes hand in hand with, with Ashley's comment regarding,  you know. When you're planning your trip utilizing this tech, but also while you're there, you can utilize this tech, um, is the use of vr. We didn't really discuss that, but I think as you're planning, definitely be open to different ways of absorbing the way and experience would actually feel like in real life, whether that be your hotel room or, um, you know.

What the lines might look like at certain areas, like be open to the different types of mediums and, and you know, we're seeing that, that surge of VR options and, and being able to, to view certain spaces, um, surge as well. So definitely be open to how you're ingesting your media in order to be able to, to, to plan for your trip.

I love that I, you know, for many years VR got really popular for a little while and then it was sort of like, man, I don't know if these little headsets are that useful or worth it, you know? 'cause some, sometimes they can be pretty expensive. Um, but I think these AI tools combined with VR are actually getting really, really interesting.

Absolutely.

a, a, a a Stanford Hackathon last week, I think, I think it was last week, where uh, some folks were making, uh, VR headsets that incorporated a lot of, um, the generative ai, like Chachi pt and deep research tools and things like that to teach people how to like, uh, fix a car on the fly. Like you just put on the glasses and see it can like, understand and interpret what it was.

Viewing and then tell you how to fix it or understand it or diagram it. This is what our friend was telling me this past weekend. It sounds amazing. So yes, similar kind of, um, similar kind of thing was your travel, you know, like put on  goggles or maybe a lot of phones are coming out with like AR tools as well.

So, um, checking things out that way, I think that's a great idea. Thank you.

One of the ways I've leveraged AR in my actual travels is I had my grandmother and we were in Portugal and I Google map something and it said it was only a half a mile away. But actually leveraging an AR tool told me that it was up a hill, there was multiple steps and I actually rerouted because that wouldn't be sustainable or accessible for my grandmother to, um, to go that route.

So I think there's a lot of different ways you can leverage AR or virtual reality tools to really see where you're going and bridge that gap with logistics as well.

So cool.

so cool.

Well, thank you both for joining me on this episode. This was so fun to like, just kind of dream, you know, what, where we could travel, how we can figure out how to get there and how to plan it. Uh, I think it's really, really awesome.

And Rachel, I have to congratulate you that you didn't sneeze.

Oh, thank

uh,  you were afraid you were gonna sneeze and what you were gonna do, which is great. Okay. Well thank you both so much. Um, I'd love to have you back on the show, uh, very soon. But appreciate your wisdom and uh, yeah, we'll see you next time hopefully.

Thank you so much, Brandon. We'll talk soon.

Thanks y'all. Bye.

Bye.