8 travel trends for wanderlusters in 2018

Looking for inspiration for your 2018 travel? Booking.com, the global leader in connecting travellers with the widest choice of incredible places to stay, has combined customer insights from over 128 million real guest reviews with research from 19,000 travellers across 26 countries to reveal the biggest travel trends for next year.

Here is what Singaporeans would like to get up to in the year ahead.

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Next year, travellers will be looking to artificial intelligence and digital technology to better understand a destination or accommodation before they book.

A third said they are comfortable letting a computer plan an upcoming trip based on data from their previous travel history, and 58 per centdo not mind whether they deal with a real person or computer, so long as their questions are answered.

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2018 is the year to dream big, as 46 per cent have a travel bucket list in mind and 83 per cent of them will aim to tick one or more destinations off their list in the coming year.

Most likely to feature on a bucket list is seeing one of the wonders of the world (56 per cent), while 38 per cent yearn to tantalise their taste buds by trying a local delicacy, and 49 per cent are thrill seekers wanting to visit a famous theme park.

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Travellers will also be inspired to return to visited and loved destinations and explore them in a whole new way.

A third will consider a holiday they experienced as a child for 2018.

Millennials look set to be even more sentimental, with 52 per cent of 18- to 34-year-olds keen to hark back to favourite family destinations.

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More than half (58 per cent) of travellers are inspired by recommendations from friends, family members or colleagues, some develop wanderlust from watching their social media feeds (43 per cent).

Reading blogs or watching recommendations on YouTube will spark ideas for 51 per cent of travellers, and on-screen locations from television, film or music videos will win over 42 per cent in the coming year.

The top TV programme locations travellers most want to visit next year are South Korea, as seen in Descendants Of The Sun (36 per cent), as well as Croatia, Spain and Iceland, inspired by Game Of Thrones (27 per cent).

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Almost double the number of people are planning to take health and well-being trips next year compared with this year (from one in 10 in 2017 to nearly one in five in 2018), with 51 per cent saying they want to walk or hike.

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About 62 per cent of travellers will take currency exchange rates into consideration when planning their travels for the year, and 57 per cent will think about the economic climate of a destination before making the decision to travel.

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When asked who their 2018 travelling companions were likely to be, the segment with the biggest increase when compared to 2017 was travelling with friends, rising from 29 per cent to 34 per cent.

One in three (30 per cent) said they would prefer to stay in a holiday rental (a holiday home or apartment) over a hotel.

Those keen to have a local experience will look to hosts for their expertise, as a quarter say it will be important that their host has strong local knowledge about local food and places to visit.

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This article was first published at The New Paper. 

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