Global | Getting Ahead of Travel Trends in 2022

Welcome to Season 2!

Getting Ahead of Travel Trends is crucial as tourism restarts and we work on our tourism marketing strategies for 2022.

This is the first episode of Season 2 of Truth Behind Travel - a weekly show hosted by Dolores Semeraro dedicated to hospitality and tourism industry professionals who want to restart the tourism and travel industry with travellers-centric tools and strategies, jump-starting their travel recovery strategies starting today. 

Google has spoken! Travel in 2022 will be:
- inclusive
- culturally engaged
- purposeful

How do we stay ahead of the trends and jump start our travel recovery strategy? In this episode, I share what are the three key trends we must watch how to take action to make sure you don't just win quick booking, but you start re-building trust in travel and your own brand advocates.

Download the Top 10 Travel Behaviour Trends in 2022 report: https://thetravelrecoverymethod.com/trends

Check out the blog post I mention in this episode: 

Post-pandemic tourism marketing strategies: the power of acknowledging fears of travel

About Dolores Semeraro

Dolores Semeraro is a Hospitality Hybrid Keynote Speaker and a Tourism Marketing Specialist with more than 15 years of experience in the travel and hospitality industry.

She is passionate about helping her clients to develop the travel recovery marketing strategies they need to restore travel confidence.

S2 E42 - Global | Getting Ahead of Travel Trends
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Dolores Semeraro is a sought-after international tourism keynote speaker and sustainable tourism marketing professional.

Dolores actively works in the tourism and travel conference space as a keynote speaker and moderator, gracing the stages of international tourism summits and trade shows.

As a professional keynote speaker, Dolores’ speaking topics encompass sustainable digital marketing for the tourism industry, how to establish digital mastery, and learn how to identify today’s traveler’s needs.

During the pandemic, Dolores launched her podcast show named ‘Truth Behind Travel Podcast’ where she regularly interviews tourism and travel industry leaders and representatives on how to rebuild the future of travel.

In the recent years, Dolores has continued to work and live on beautiful islands such as Mauritius, where she started her tourism and hospitality marketing consultancy working closely with the Mauritian luxury hospitality sector as corporate trainer.

According to her international clients, Dolores is a gifted trainer and intuitive workshop facilitator.

She is now based in Europe where she actively works as keynote speaker and corporate trainer in the tourism industry.

www.doloressemeraro.com

dolores@doloressemeraro.com

Instagram @dolores_semeraro

LinkedIn @dolores.sem

Transcript

I have I a question for you: 

If you are working in the hospitality and tourism industry, and you spent the last 20 months on a standstill – it’s 99% because people stop traveling. So if knowing what makes them travel again gives you the unfair advantage, wouldn’t you want to know?

Welcome to Truth Behind Travel Podcast. My name is Dolores Semeraro and this is my weekly show dedicated to hospitality and tourism professionals who want to restart the tourism and travel industry 

with travellers-centric tools and insights and jump-starting their travel recovery journey starting today.

Subscribe to the show to be the first know when the next episode full of tips, tools and strategies on travel recovery goes out.

I can hear you asking ‘What difference does it make if we know what are the travel trends that are going to manifest next year?’ and especially at this time of the year, travel trends are populating social media. But I have I a question for you: 

If you are working in the hospitality and tourism industry, and you spent the last 20 months on a standstill – it’s 99% because people stop traveling. So knowing what makes them travel again gives you the unfair advantage, wouldn’t you want to know?

So this is what trends are all about. It’s about reading through the lines of what people are sharing these days, what are they asking, what do they need? 

On today’s episode we are going to talk about the three reasons why travellers have radically diverted the way they plan their holidays, what’s on top of their bucket list and what can you do to make sure you are giving them what they want. 

Also, I want to officially welcome you back to Truth Behind travel podcast and open doors to Season 2. A new Season of hospitality and tourism marketing strategies focused on the tools and best practices you need to get back on your feet. 

My name is Dolores Semeraro and I have been diving deep into what travel recovery looks like for the past 20 months, sharing business strategies, case studies and insights from tourism industry leaders around the world in more than 40 episodes on this podcast. 

In season 2, the focus is all about tools, strategies, frameworks – all you need to stop procrastinating and start taking action. Are you with me? So welcome to Season 2 of Truth Behind Travel, let’s get started. 

Why getting ahead of travel trends in 2022 will future-proof your business.

Google has spoken. Travel in 2022 will be more inclusive, culturally engaged and purposeful according to their recent survey and the findings are not surprising me. 

Let’s start with Inclusivity. 

People are not longer booking holidays ‘just’ to have a good time. Ok, who ‘doesn’t want to have a good time, I get it. But here is the point. Pre-pandemic – for quite a number of years – travel choices were ‘ sort of easy’ – At home, we would spend time with family and friends, no hardship in that, we could plan how to celebrate life in a much more relaxed way. 

Well fast forward 20 months of lockdowns – and we see people treasuring the most underrated aspect of all: TIME. Celebrating a ‘life moment’ is going be the key-factor for which travellers are choosing their next travel experience. 

In other words: Many have come to realize that life is precious after all and that it must be celebrated, not just lived. Who is with me say Aye!

I would also add that inclusivity has brought people closer to a much stronger sense of belonging. Think about the extended loneliness, not just physical but also mental – over the past 20 months – a strong call for Celebration of life moments is in the air – people want to celebrate life – and with that their renewed sense of where they belong, the place, their origins, their cultural traits. 

I shared on my blog  a recent article: fears over health, finances and relationships - have impacted the lightheartedness of travel choices. As a result, the perception of time passing has radically changed, pushing people to take that long-postponed trip abroad to celebrate special occasions, or simply to celebrate life. 

Number 2 - Culturally engaged holidays

That’s a good one – I cant’ talk about it enough. 

If you are a destination-marketing manager you are probably familiar with the balance between international standards and local uniqueness. 

Too much of the first would result into a hybrid holiday destination that leaves a soulless, cold impression to the visitor. Too much of the second could impact the perception of safety and comfort relatively known to international travellers. 

However, many hospitality groups are refreshing their roots with the locations they operate their hotels and resorts, and that’s  not just a coincidence. People are asking to connect with the locale – Be it the food, the nature, the history, the fashion. It’s a deep sense of human connection that touches everybody, at any age. 

In the top 10 Travel Behaviour Trends Report which I shared on my website this week, one of the trends – that I very much relate to - listed in the Self-discovery travel section is directly connected to the clear desire to travel in a more culturally-engaged manner, deeply connected with the local community spirit and open to learn more about foreign cultures. 

So, my question to you is ‘ how are you embracing the ‘local X factor’? when I was working in the Maldives- the local island tours were one of the highlights back then – and that was about 7 years ago! Today, people do not want only to shop souvenirs, they want to know that the local schools are supported, that local labor is protected and the villages are empowered. 

This is what ‘culturally – engaged’ truly means. So get ready to answer some uncomfortable questions raised by travellers tomorrow if you aren’t working on your social sustainability goals today. 

Number 3 Purposeful travel 

Ok, let’s take a moment to reflect what exactly purposeful mean to you –  

 If travel serves a higher purpose – the one to connect, to others, to ourselves, to the place we plan to visit – how come it’s a trends? I hear you asking. 

 It’s interesting to observe that we so often get carried away by a common behavioural pattern when it’s already too late. When it’s TrendING instead of acting upon when it’s a Trend. In other words we need to be secure, we need validation of tourism marketing strategies that work, before investing and venturing out on our changing our own. 

There was a proverb that caught my attention recently – goes like: the early bird might catch the worm, but the early worm gets eaten. There’s nothing wrong in wanting to be sure about the outcomes of a strategy. However when it comes to Purposeful Travel, the signs are not in plain sight all the times. 

Purposeful travel goes both ways – it’s in the choices of travellers wanting to make their trip more sustainable and with a lighter foot-print But it’s also in the industry narrative. 

The more we talk about it, the more people learn how to play their part. If we don’t talk about it, if we don’t add sustainable travel topics in our narrative, we are to blame as much as the people who still travel blind and tone-deaf to the impact the act of traveling has everything. 

But don’t forget: Good travellers are quick at spotting green washing and will not hesitate to voice their concerns and findings online. So mind your facts before your publish your next press release.

 Well, we have them – Inclusivity, Culturally-engaged travel and Purposeful Choices 

As travel restrictions ease around the world and people are starting to travel again, ask yourself, how much of the ‘business as usual’ luggage you carry with you is no longer relevant?  

The trend report and the links I mentioned in today’s episode are in the shownotes, thank you for joining me today and for being back in my podcast family. More tips, tools and strategies will come in the following weeks so don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast and if you want to share your opinion on today’s topic – send me a review on Apple Podcast – if you are on apple, that’s the best way to get the podcast message ranked and seen by more people. 

Thank you and speak to you soon next week!