Revelry travel and legacy travel. Silver bullet wellness and mood boarding. XZ beta travel, F-It Lists and Coolcations.
Are you keeping up with the new vocabulary of travel? The voice of luxury is awash in new buzzwords, it seems. And they all are pointing to the same good news. Luxury travel advisors are having a moment; luxury sales are soaring; and the most well-known global luxury consortia, Virtuoso, is feeling the love.
The new vocabulary points to a slew of positive trends in the market, said Virtuoso VP of global PR Misty Belles at last week’s 36th annual Virtuoso Travel Week—and with “so many people fighting to see the same things,” luxury travelers increasingly are relying on travel advisors for their skill, knowledge and access.
“We’re seeing no slowdown in luxury,” Belles said, starting with a whole new generation of travelers as Gen Z starts to have babies and bring them along on trips (that’s XZ beta travel). In the meantime, Gen Z is prioritizing luxury—including luxury air, luxury hotels and luxury cruises; taking “coolcations” to colder and less traveled destinations like Northern Europe; and engaging in “revelry travel” that “celebrates travel in a joyful way”—and at any cost. F$%k-It Lists are replacing bucket lists, as young travelers head around the globe to do what they want to do right now, rather than waiting to retire.
In the wellness space, “silver bullet” wellness has customers seeking trips that “highlight hyper-specific, targeted ‘cures’ tailored to their individual wellness needs.” And mood boarding describes the way luxury advisors engage with clients nowadays, replacing questions like “what do you want to do on Tuesday?” with a discussion of how their customers want the vacation to make them feel.
(Keep up here, please. There will not be a test, but if you want to sound like a luxury expert you’ll need to master the vocabulary 😊. And of course, each word describes a new way of looking at—and selling to—your customer base.)
Virtuoso knows this market; it has seen a 76% increase in the number of clients looking for an advisor through its website this year, Belles said, and its 2,300 partners in 200 countries are selling $35 billion worth of travel a year.
Tips From the Advisor Panel
On a panel of travel advisors, meanwhile, Fernando Gonzalez, CEO of First in Service, noted that both corporate and leisure travel are growing, with customers on both sides of the business seeking experiences that bring groups together. “There’s a desire to be with other people, to relate and be able to touch,” he said, whether travelers are families or co-workers. And while his agency sold virtually no cruise pre-pandemic, that’s now its fastest-growing sector across all markets, including Mexico and Spain and Canada. “It has to do with traveling with friends, where you can be close, but it also allows squeezing in more destinations, so you get a broader sense of a region. And now the product is becoming a lot more interesting; every major luxury player is launching a yacht or a boat or some sort of high-end experience.”
Cathy Holler of Momenti in Canada noted that Africa sales are “crazy, and a lot of it last-minute,” with Zambia growing as Botswana has become so expensive. “Sustainability” also seems to have finally taken on real definition. Travelers are looking to slow down; where the typical safari used to be “two nights-two nights-two nights, now it’s four and four, or even four and four and four” as clients try to engage with the local culture or with a cause such as sustainability or conservation. While clients do not usually ask about a supplier’s sustainability policies, travel advisors “are trying to navigate the conversation around what is meaningful to the clients and drive them to the properties that tie in sustainability and communities.”
The definition of “multi-gen,” too, has changed. “It’s gone to multiple families or very extended families, so we’ll have divorced parents traveling with new spouses, caregivers, children and grandparents,” said Black Tomato’s Carolyn Addison. And she agreed that travel advisors “have a responsibility and strategic interest as a community to make sure the destinations we work with are preserved. We communicate to clients the options in terms of supporting local businesses,” and organize ways for them to spend time with local communities.
Virtuoso CEO Matthew Upchurch noted that “many wealthy people are first-generation wealthy,” and understand the responsibility inherent in having obtained wealth. Often they really appreciate knowing that while they are having a great experience, they also are supporting companies that are carbon neutral. “You don’t have to give them a Power Point, they just need a story,” he said. And of course in the end, travel “is the one industry where we have to be sustainable or we won’t have an industry.”
Show Us the Numbers
Virtuoso also shared facts and figures from its extensive database. Future 2025-2026 sales already are up 38% over last year. Even better, there’s a 76% increase in consumers seeking out travel advisors so far this year through virtuoso.com.
For fall travel, domestic trips still dominate. But record numbers are heading to Italy, France, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Spain, Saint Barthelemy, Portugal, Canada and Japan. The largest growth areas year-over-year are Canada (+168%), Japan (+160%) and Saint Barthelemy (+155%). Major cities like Paris, London, New York, Rome and Tokyo are showing significant increases, while Taormina (Sicily), Napa and Amsterdam are seeing rate declines, making this fall a great time to visit.
For the festive season, Mexico, Hawaii, Anguilla, Costa Rica and Saint Barthelemy are the top destinations, with Saint Lucia, the Dominican Republic and Grenada also showing double- and triple-digit percentage increases. Maui is up 66%. Overall, fall bookings are up 23% and festive season bookings are up 32% over 2023.
Among their luxury client base, Virtuoso advisors have noted growing demand for “exceptionally high-end experiences” such as VIP transportation, luxury yachts and private residences, expedition cruises, exotic destinations (such as Fiji, the Maldives and Thailand) and African safaris, as travelers prioritize “curiosity and exploration, joy and happiness, and awe and wonder of nature.”
It’s time to roll new words and destinations and customers—and the bigger budgets they promise—into your marketing efforts for 2025.
Cheryl’s 40-year career in journalism is bookended by roles in the travel industry, including Executive Editor of Business Travel News in the 1990s, and recently, Editor in Chief of Travel Market Report and admin of Cheryl Rosen’s Group for Travel Professionals, a news and support group on Facebook. As an independent contractor since retiring from the 9-to-5 to travel more, she has written regular articles about the life and business of travel agents for Luxury Travel Advisor, Travel Agent, and Insider Travel Report. She also writes and edits for professional publications in the financial services, business, and technology sectors.
