Australia noted a 446% week-over-week growth in booking volumes after Taylor Swift concert announcements in Melbourne and Sydney
Amadeus has released its 2024 travel trends and as pointed out by similar courtesy of Booking.com and Expedia, travel and hospitality continue to shift and evolve in this age of Artificial Intelligence, data, and technology.
Music tourism takes center stage, ushering in a new era of connection through live concerts and festivals. Coldplay’s upcoming 2024 tour dates in Romania and Greece showcase a tangible impact, triggering a surge in flight searches and bookings. Simultaneously, according to Amadeus, the electric revolution of air travel is finally here, with eVTOL aircraft preparing for takeoff and promising lower emission options.
Amid these changes, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) emerges as a game-changer, offering hyper-personalised travel planning experiences. Lastly, the allure of business class travel undergoes a transformation with the unbundling of fares, catering to a diverse audience seeking accessible luxury.
‘Music tourism’ strikes the right chord
In the aftermath of pandemic-induced isolation, a surge in live concerts and festivals is shaping a new era of musical tourism. Amadeus’ research forecasts a continued boom, exemplified by the impact of Coldplay’s 2024 tour dates in Romania and Greece. The announcement triggered a 62% spike in flight searches to Athens and a 91% surge to Romania.
Bookings to Romania in 2024 recorded week over week growth of a 436% increase in booking volume in just two weeks of 2023.
Similarly, when Beyoncé performed two concerts in Stockholm in summer 2023, the 80,000 fans that descended on the city sparked “Beyflation” – a hike in prices from local restaurants and hotels.
Taylor Swift’s 2024 tour is also anticipated to contribute to a tourism upswing, with Australia experiencing a noteworthy 446% week-over-week growth in booking volumes after concert announcements in Melbourne and Sydney. So far, the pop icon has completed 146 shows and generated US $1.4 billion in ticket sales.
As for Asia, the total searches to Singapore grew between weeks 24 and 27, covering both Taylor Swift and Coldplay concerts. Both events had a significant impact on the booking volume in January and March 2024.
Meanwhile, the announcement of lottery results on July 25, 2023, for Taylor Swift’s concert in Japan sparked an uptick between weeks 28 and 30.
Influencers take the lead
The landscape of travel inspiration is evolving, with social media influencers transforming into direct booking facilitators.
Influencers like Ana Hernández Sárria and Rafael Fernandez Caballero are leveraging platforms such as Thatch and TrovaTrip to design and host group trips, a phenomenon that Inc recognizes as a growing trend. This shift marks a significant change in the way travellers plan and book their journeys.
For Generation Z (those born between 1997 and 2012), TikTok is showing its potential as a search engine, overtaking even Google when it comes to researching places to visit, sourcing recommendations from peers and discovering travel hacks that save money.
Data from mobile booking app Hopper shows that when a destination is trending on TikTok, there’s a corresponding spike in bookings. For example, when #amsterdam got 6.9 billion TikTok views in November 2022, flight and hotel searches increased by 85%.
The electric revolution of air travel
As urban congestion and pollution escalate, the aviation industry is gearing up for a futuristic solution: electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. German manufacturer Volocopter plans to introduce a fleet of electric VoloCity eVTOL for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
In an interview with WiT, Hon Lung Chu, head of APAC, Volocopter, spoke of the service’s launch in Singapore, saying, “We will go cross-border to Johor, Malaysia and Batam and Bintan, Indonesia – places where we can add value and offer consumers a choice. Our range is 35km, so we are evaluating those routes.”
Meanwhile, Toff Mobility, the first electric air company in Asia, is working toward debuting electric aircraft in 2024 in South Korea, while Surcar Airlines has selected Zeroavia to provide hydrogen-electric engines for its seaplanes in the Canary Islands.
Over in the US, Joby Aviation intends to start commercial eVTOL flights from 2025 and has signed agreements to work with Delta Air Lines and Japanese airline ANA, which wants to operate e-taxi flights during the Expo 2025 in Osaka. In the UK, Virgin Atlantic has invested in a fleet of Vertical Aerospace eVTOL that could serve a city-to-city network of Electric Skyways as soon as 2025.
The emergence of intelligent concierge services
Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) is reshaping the travel planning experience, offering hyper-personalized and intuitive assistance.The future of GAI-powered customer service promises increased empathy and reduced workload for human employees, focusing on specialised issues.
The next generation of GAI-powered customer service will be delivered with greater patience and empathy, reducing the workload of employees to deal with the bulk of after-sales servicing, giving them the bandwidth to provide the human touch on more specialist issues. For example:
- Instead of selecting filters to fine-tune your search on a metasearch site or OTA (online travel agency), travelers can simply provide a brief to a chatbot in the same way you would a human advisor.
- Expedia’s new ChatGPT plug-in (launched April 2023) acts like a virtual travel assistant, listening to customer needs and delivering instant hotel and itinerary recommendations, with links to book.
GAI will even be able to respond to written customer reviews. TripAdvisor, Trip.com, GetYourGuide, Klook, Kayak and OpenTable have all announced ChatGPT plug-ins and many more will follow suit in the coming years. Meanwhile, Airbnb founder Brian Chesky has announced that “AI will radically change” Airbnb service in 2024.
It’s not a surprising statement, considering Airbnb’s acquisition of the stealth startup, GamePlanner.AI.
Unraveling the business class experience
The allure of business class travel is expanding, driven by the trend of “unbundled” business class fares. Thanks, in part, to the influence of social media, there is a growing desire among all age groups (but especially the under 50s) for lifestyle optimization.
Airlines like Emirates, Qatar Airways, Zipair, and Finnair are catering to the demand for more affordable business class options. Simultaneously, premium offerings like Air New Zealand’s Business Premier Luxe and Lufthansa’s Allegris business class showcase a commitment to diverse, accessible, and luxurious in-flight experiences.
For context, because 75 % of airline profits are generated from business class, offering more business class options is good news for airlines too. The New York Times also reports that US airlines are increasing the amount of premium seating on flights, which allows for 25% to 75% more premium-economy, business- class and first-class options.
Amadeus reports that in 2019, Emirates was one of the first airlines to launch “special” business class tickets, with no lounge access, restricted seat selection, and no upgrade abilities. Following its lead, Qatar Airways unveiled a “Business Class Lite” fare, paving the way for “Everyone VIPs”. In this case, passengers must pay extra for lounge access and date or route changes and earn fewer Avios/Qmiles. With the trend gathering momentum, Japan’s Zipair and Finnair began offering basic business tickets in 2021, while Air France and KLM added Business Class Light fares in 2023.
Amadeus forecasts that this trend will grow in the coming year, with the lines blurring between what was traditionally considered “luxe” and “economy” in an airplane.
Image credit: Amadeus
