I know. I know. You’re sick to death of yet another report predicting traveller trends, from “Dry Tourism” – people drinking less alcohol these days – to “Romantasy Retreats” – rejecting reality – and “Shelf-ie Tourism” – unique supermarket finds.
Personally, I’d love the job of coming up with those names – or do you think AI does it better?
Anyway, I promise you, this is not a report based on solid research and the right sample sizes, just me rambling on about a couple of topics I have top of my mind this week.
Actually, the first topic didn’t even figure until yesterday – this is how agile we have to be these days, with AI and someone else I won’t name upending everything we know and hold dear.
So yesterday, while chewing the fat with two friends over what we did during the holiday period, one of them said she went on a seven-day silent retreat in Korea.
She said it so matter-of-factly that it shut us up, quite literally. There we were, talking about frivolous things like eating durians in Penang and kids throwing up on road trips, and we were brought down to earth by this confession from a Millennial.
It seemed so startling, and yet it made so much sense.
Shut Up and Travel with Me
In a world where we are so overwhelmed by the pace of change, and the noise over AI and it coming for our jobs, and the fact that there are now troops in Greenland, a place we associate more with ice than arms, we desperately need an escape – and travel is the easiest form of escapes, even better if it’s silent.
We didn’t go too much into what she did while there – that’s a short conversation – but she said she saw it as a quest. “It’s a “Can I do it?” moment – one of those things that teased my competitive side. No sophisticated “whys”.”
See, you can take the Millennial out of Singapore but you can’t take Singapore out of the Millennial.
Anyway, whatever the why, she returned clearly transformed and one of her key lessons is “one thing I’m very convinced about after observing the bees for 10 days: they work a standard 9 to 5. The tree they hovered around buzzed loudly during the midday hours but was silent at dawn and dusk.”
Ah, lucky bees indeed.
Isn’t it ironic that we now use bees as the gold standard in work when in the past, we’d say things like, “Poor thing, she has to work like worker bee. I want to be the queen.”
Slow Down and Smell The Durians
Anyway, along with wanting to go silent, another trend that’s popping up fast is slow travel. At WiT Seoul last November, we had Farmer Eric Chong of Green Acres, Penang, sharing that travellers who make the trek to his organic farm in the north of the Malaysian island are skewing younger.
Chong, who’s a proponent of the Slow Travel Food movement, says, “Younger people are seeking nature and a slower form of travel. They come to our farm to learn about organic farming, the origins of food as well as activities such as harvesting, and we take them on tours to nearby villages to see a rural side of life.”
What they enjoy is the warmth and personal touch of the experience, he says. “Tech cannot replace that love or that warmth. That’s what travellers want.”
The Great Unplugging: IRL, please
The third trend I want to raise is what I call The Great Unplugging.
This article, “The great logging off: Intentional screen reduction is the new wellness move”, captures the growing need to unplug. It says that “Google Trends data shows sustained growth in queries around: “digital minimalism” “reduce screen time” “do not disturb life” “social media break”.
And it reports that “analog experiences are having a moment” and it’s Gen Z that’s “driving a renaissance of offline leisure: Reading parties, Academic or lecture bars, Pottery and ceramics studios, Printmaking and bookbinding classes”.
Which is good news for “doing” activities in travel. Of course, there’ll be the after-social media posts like “I made this pot myself #madebyhand #doityourself #inreallife” or “I drew this during an art retreat in Provence #coolart #realart #inreallife”.
Point is, it’s also good news for IRL – the now acronym for In Real Life.
Seems, more people are wanting to meet IRL and do real things IRL.
I remember an early piece of advice I got when I was the same age as the Silent Millennial – it was “show up, that’s 90% of the battle”.
So, for 2026, people, shut up, if you want to; go slow, if you wish to; and show up IRL, which you must.
