Travel Trends 2018. Cities, Experiences, Tours and Activities

Travel Trends 2018
Travel Trends 2018 (source: https://www.imtj.com/news/spa-and-wellness-travel-trends-2018/)

TripAdvisor and Mastercard have released very important statistics from 2017, revealing the most visited cities and the most booked tours in the entire World, respectively.

This is valuable information that can be used to predict travel trends for 2018.

World’s most popular experiences/tours in 2017

TripAdvisor, the World’s largest online provider of reviews and bookable tours/activities, has shared its top travel trend report for the experiences segment.

Measured by 2017 booking count totals, the top 10 includes:

  1. Skip the line: Vatican Museums, St Peter’s, Sistine Chapel
  2. Chicago Architecture River Cruise
  3. Skip the line: Ancient Rome and Colosseum Half-Day Walking Tour
  4. Rome Hop-On, Hop-Off Sightseeing Tour
  5. Priority Access: Barcelona Sagrada Familia Tour
  6. Eiffel Tower Summit: Priority access with host
  7. Warner Bros Studio: The Making of Harry Potter with Luxury Round-Trip Transport from London
  8. Empire State Building Tickets
  9. Murano, Burano, and Torcello half-day sightseeing tour
  10. Tuscany in One Day Sightseeing Tour

World’s fastest-growing experiences/tours categories in 2017

Additionally, in the same report, TripAdvisor has revealed the fastest-growing categories, ranked by year-over-year growth in total bookings count.

  1. Historical and heritage tours (+125%)
  2. Sunset cruises (+86%)
  3. Private day trips (+79%)
  4. Snorkeling (+70%)
  5. Kayaking and canoeing (+67%)
  6. Sailing trips (+61%)
  7. Catamaran trips (+60%)
  8. Food tours (+57%)
  9. Cooking classes (+57%)
  10. Museum tickets and passes (+54%)

World’s most popular cities in 2017

On the other hand, Mastercard has released its Global Destination Cities Index for 2017, which measures the number of international overnight visitors in different cities around the World.

The index provides a ranking of the 132 most visited cities around the World. Last year top ten includes:

  1. Bangkok, Thailand — 20.2 million international visitors
  2. London, UK — 20 million international visitors
  3. Paris, France — 16.1 million
  4. Dubai, UAE — 16 million
  5. Singapore — 13.45 million
  6. Tokyo, Japan — 12.5 million
  7. Seoul, South Korea — 12.44 million
  8. New York, USA — 12.4 million
  9. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  10. Hong Kong — 9.25 million

And to complete the top 20…

  1. Istanbul, Turkey — 9.24 million
  2. Barcelona, Spain — 8.9 million
  3. Amsterdam, Netherlands — 8.7 million
  4. Milan, Italy — 8.4 million
  5. Osaka, Japan — 7.9 million
  6. Taipei, Taiwan — 7.8 million
  7. Rome, Italy — 7.3 million
  8. Shanghai, China — 6.65 million
  9. Vienna, Austria — 6.63 million
  10. Prague, Czech Republic — 6.4 million

A full copy of the report, in PDF format, is available here.

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