In recent years there have been increasing reports of a dramatic growth in solo travel. The American Express 2024 Global Travel Trends Report identified solo travel as “a major trend among young travellers, with 76% of Millennials and Gen-Z planning solo trips this year.” The Forbes Travel Trends Report 2025 also reported an increase: "Many more of us are jetting off on adventures alone. It could be a consequence of the pandemic, when many people became used to their own com

When an email from Tripadvisor popped into our inbox headed “Psst… Our Trendcast knows where you should go next” that rang a bell. A while ago, Wendy Morrill and I wrote a blog piece on “the intention economy”, which outlined how consumer desires and motivations as the drivers of tourism demand. The growth of AI, and algorithms able to predict our wants, the ‘intention economy’ means that companies can know what we want and where we might travel, before we do. Creative touri

A new article published in The Conversation analyses the demand for creative tourism in South Africa. Gijsbert Hoogendoorn, Anneli Douglas and Greg Richards report that Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) are increasingly taking part in creative skill building experiences such as cooking classes in traditional African cuisine in townships like Soweto and Langa, or painting workshops in small towns like Villiersdorp in the Western Cape. Street creativity in Johannesburg T

Wendy Morrill and I recently wrote a piece for the Good Tourism Blog, charting the possible effects of the 'intention economy' - the idea that AI will soon know what you want before you do. This is significant because of the growing range of experiences we have to choose from. Algorithmic curation is already being applied in many fields: for example, 70% of the videos watched on YouTube are now selected for us by algorithms. Some of the implications of the growing curation tr

Encountering a discarded map of the USA in the street was a clear sign of the change. Instead of being used as a holiday planning tool, the map is now consigned to the trash. No point in considering a destination that doesn’t want you to visit. This was most starkly underlined by a BBC headline labelling the US as ‘A hostile state', describing how some travellers are now avoiding the world’s number 1 travel destination. US on the scrap heap? Canadians are leading the ‘avoid t

Greg Richards and Wendy Morrill From the "Good Tourism" Blog Many people see themselves as responsible travellers, but act irresponsibly. Our research on youth travel has uncovered a significant think-do gap between expressed desires and actual behaviour. Young travellers want to travel sustainably, but their actions could be seen otherwise, which highlights the quandary of sustainable travel. In the latest WYSE New Horizons survey, we asked travellers aged 16-29 about their