Marketing company JWT has published a report dedicated to most important travel trends for this year.
Hotels that have no convenient fitness facilities have to hurry up and change this as, according to the company, fitness on the go will be one of the huge trends this year. With modern rhythm of live people have less and less free time, but they want to maintain their health and vitality. This means that fitness facilities must be easily accessible. Currently, many hotels even design guestrooms in a special way so that they have areas for yoga or cardio, or provide workout videos on-demand.
Africa is expected to become a hot destination this year, and so there’s no wonder why so many internationally famous hoteliers are eager to expand their portfolios in Africa. Marriott opens a hotel in Kigali (the capital or Rwanda) this year and wants to increase its portfolio in Africa in 6 times by 2020, Starwood opens 6 new hotels in Africa by 2016, and Accor plans to have as many as 5,000 guestrooms and 30 hotels in Africa by 2016.
Mall-like-hotels is a relatively new trend that is particularly hot in the Middle East. Today, numerous new hotels in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Lebanon, and Egypt are merged with megamalls. This year Sheraton opens Mall of the Emirates in Dubai. Yas Mall in Abu Dhabi that will become home to seven hotels is to open a bit later.
While river cruises remain hot this year as well, expert forecast one more new trend holidays in the country. Currently, more than a half of the world’s population lives in cities, and so people are eager to escape from stress, pollution, and noise, even for a short time. Hotels in the country are advised to change their designs to nature-themed and offer organic food and wellness programs.
Finally, the so called “jet setting” is obviously a mass trend. When the first The Lord of the Rings movie appeared in 2011, an increase in tourist arrivals to New Zealand estimated 50%. Now The Hobbit movie is expected to attract even more visitors to the country. Movie fans want to visit the areas where popular, mostly Hollywood, movies were filmed, and this trend becomes a mainstream one.