Inspirational tourism trends for 2026

In both educational programmes and professional initiatives, courses, workshops, and projects often begin with current trends. Within the fields of tourism and business, trends serve as a foundational reference point. They help our students make sense of the landscape they will soon enter, and the operational environments their thesis commissioners and project partners are already navigating. Trend reports consistently capture attention, stimulate curiosity, and reveal the possibilities unfolding just beyond the horizon.

Trend insights on tourism go Tarot

Skift, a leading tourism think tank, publishes some of the travel industry’s most widely followed research and annual trend insights, known as the Skift Megatrends. In 2026, the unveiling of these megatrends took an unusually evocative form. Instead of a conventional report, Skift presented its insights as a digital Tarot deck, with cards bearing names such as The Closed Gate, The High Priestess, The Magician, and Death.

This playful framing was more than a visual gimmick as tarot cards are symbols of transition, uncertainty, and transformation. These are the forces shaping the global travel landscape today as well as the very questions that tourism higher education must grapple with. How do we prepare future professionals for an industry in flux? What knowledge, skills, and mindsets will they need to navigate a world of accelerating change?

Unsurprisingly, Skift’s trends echo many of the themes explored by geopolitical thinkers such as Stubb (2026), Bildt (2025), and McFaul (2025), including the disruption of the global order and the growing influence of the Global South. They also align with Sitra’s (2026) megatrends, which identify climate change, population ageing, and systemic transformation as defining forces of the coming decades.

What sets Skift’s megatrends apart, however, is their focus on travel and tourism. It is a lens that brings these big global shifts closer to home to everyone who wants to get excited about exploring the world. They deliver exactly the kind of provocative, savour-worthy insights we love sharing with our tourism and business students. Our trend radar spotted two themes that stand out particularly clearly in the 2026 deck: technology and Asia.

Tech touch

Skift’s three technology-focused Tarot cards – The Chariot, The Magician, and Death – signal that travel’s next phase prioritises control over time, decisions, and innovation rather than sheer speed or scale. Together, they illustrate how tech is reshaping booking, experiences, management, and even the industry’s moral compass. For tourism students, these cards are more than trend metaphors, as they map the competencies and critical perspectives that will define professional readiness in the years ahead.

The Chariot traditionally symbolises forward motion and mastery. In Skift’s 2026 deck, it captures the shift from experimental autonomous vehicles to practical infrastructure. As self-driving systems begin operating on the roads, their greatest value is not faster travel, but reclaimed time: self-driving systems reduce errors, ease traffic, and let passengers work, rest, and connect en route (McKinsey 2025a) . Robotaxis and autonomous trucks will become mainstream by around 2035 (World Economic Forum 2025). In San Francisco, tour operators have already started offering city tours via Waymo’s self-driving fleet, transforming transit into a unique, enjoyable experience (Waymo 2025).

For car-reliant destinations, The Chariot turns ‘travel time’ into valuable, pleasurable moments. For tourism students, it raises compelling questions about destination and visitor experience management, and how mobility innovation can be leveraged to create new tourism products.

The Magician embodies skill, tools, and the power to shape outcomes. Skift uses it to describe the growing role of large language models and agentic AI as the primary interface for travel planning and management. AI assistants will replace traditional apps and websites as the main entry point to digital services (Gartner 2025; McKinsey 2025b). For example, Qatar Airways’ Sama is an AI-powered digital human cabin crew, engaging global audiences with travel tips, layover stories, and behind-the-scenes content in a human-like way.

The Magician automates routines while quietly shaping preferences, expectations, and experiences behind the scenes. This is precisely why digital literacy and AI fluency are becoming core competencies in tourism education. Students need not only the technical skills to use these tools but also the critical competencies to understand how they shape consumer behaviour, personalise services, and raise new ethical questions about data, transparency, and trust.

Death in Tarot signals necessary endings for transformation, not literal doom. Skift applies this symbolism to aviation sustainability, and the uncomfortable realisation that long-promised solutions may not arrive in time. Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) have long been presented as aviation’s path to decarbonisation. Yet production and adoption are falling short of expectations, making net-zero targets increasingly unrealistic. As aviation remains the largest source of tourism-related emissions, the industry is facing a reckoning. Some airlines are already dialing back offsets and commitments as SAF proves uneconomic.

The card urges releasing outdated narratives to embrace longer-term innovations like battery-electric, hydrogen-electric aircraft, and carbon capture. They may be uncertain but essential paths forward. For the next generation of tourism professionals, this is not a distant policy debate. It demands a sustainability mindset that goes beyond greenwashing literacy, one that is comfortable sitting with complexity, questioning prevailing narratives, and thinking boldly about what responsible tourism leadership looks like in an era of delayed promises and urgent timelines.

Asian wave

Three Skift Megatrend cards point clearly eastwards, highlighting Asia’s growing influence on global tourism culture and demand. Skift is not alone: Euromonitor International (2025) likewise notes that Asian preferences increasingly shape global consumer trends. We want our students to recognise the immense opportunities that come from understanding the Asian market.

The High Priestess symbolises intuition, ritual, and hidden knowledge. Skift reinterprets her as Asia’s growing dominance on beauty and wellness tourism driven by South Korea’s influence on skincare and cosmetic procedures. Ancient spa rituals and destination-specific beauty treatments now steer travel decisions, with hotels gearing up for skincare-focused guests.

Booking.com (2025) even came up with a new term for it, glowcations. They are high-touch, skin-centric journeys that align with trends like coolcations and calmcations that have been setting the tone for destinations like Finland for years already (read more in our article Finland is perfectly positioned to benefit from the 2026 consumer trends reshaping travel). Travellers want to get rid of their tired office look and return with a holiday glow.

Korea Tourism Organization’s K-Beauty campaign, partnered with a skincare company (PR Newswire 2025), targets visitors from China, Japan, and the US. Hotel minibars are turning into ‘skincare bars’ where guests can try skin, body, nail and hair care products during their stay and buy them home. Skift notes Chinese outbound travellers, the world’s largest market, now prioritise immersive beauty experiences alongside luxury brands.

The Curator stands for thoughtful selection and storytelling. It describes experiential retail which blends hospitality, arts, entertainment, nature, and local culture into immersive spaces, vital touchpoints, that captivate travellers during their journeys. Airports in Doha and Singapore lead the way, offering waterfalls and birdsong, lush plants, pop-up art, regional cuisine and serene escapes while in transit. These connections drive spending but go beyond luxury shops as travellers crave memorable discoveries.

Booking.com’s (2025) studies show that a quarter of travellers are looking for edible souvenirs (like artisan oils and spices) to bring a taste of their destination home and relive their holiday experiences in their own kitchens. It is essential for tourism students to recognise the seamless integration of retail and tourism in creating authentic, memorable, and multifaceted customer journeys.

The Eastern Rise signals Asia’s post-pandemic resurgence as the ‘epicenter of new luxury demand’, delivering higher volume and value globally. Asia is now the fastest growing tourism market, emphasising sustainability and diversity. Luxury is no longer defined by Paris, London and New York but by secluded boutique hotels of Bangkok, Bali spa escapes, and Japanese ryokans.

Just like in geopolitics, the geographies of tourism are shifting towards the Global South. To thrive in their future workplaces, our graduates must cultivate a global mindset and an understanding of cultural nuances. A reality, the Skift Megatrends 2026 tarot cards make strikingly clear.

At Haaga-Helia, we bring these trends to life in the classroom. Our students embrace the hospitality mindset, learning to craft experiential services that transform journeys. Skift’s trend cards brilliantly capture this: they turn discovery into excitement, making the path as wondrous as the destination. They reveal valuable lessons for the year ahead, and the way they were packaged makes those insights even more impactful.

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