World Travel Market global trends report 2015

Medical tourism does not exactly follow patterns of conventional tourism but trends on who goes where tend to be similar. New report from World Travel Market – Global trends 2015

London’s World Travel Market is the biggest travel trade show in the world and the report it produces is compelling reading.

The recent ‘WTM global trends report 2015’ offers an insight into to the size and shape of travel and tourism and identifies pressing industry issues, emerging brands, destinations and demographics, growth categories and consumer trends. It does not deal specifically with medical tourism but although medical tourism does not exactly follow patterns of conventional tourism, trends on who goes where tend to be similar.

The top emerging travel trends:

• The new American dream: work less and play hard
  A growing number of American companies offer unlimited vacation time to create a happier, loyal and motivated staff, which will have an effect on travel bookings.
• Smart technology drives travel to UK’s secondary cities
  Digitalisation and hi-tech solutions are redefining the tourist offerings of UK urban centres to boost travel outside of London, currently the jewel in the crown of UK tourism.
• Alternative travellers revolutionise European city break
  Young and hip travellers’ interest in alternative city areas opens new business opportunities and helps diversifying urban attractions in European cities struggling with excessive tourism.
• Travel 3.0: the advent of smart travel
  Smart technology is transforming the tourism industry with personalised services to create enjoyable experiences suited to a traveller’s individual preferences.
• Iran: the next travel hotspot
  The recent sanction lift sparked a scramble to open Iran to international visitors, attracted by its ancient Persian history, 17 World Heritage Sites, as well as natural attractions.
• Technology start-ups changing the face of Africa
  With technology start-ups flourishing across the continent, Africa is entering a new era of innovation, which will help change the perception to international tourists.
• Luxury hotels keeping in with the crowd
  Luxury hotels are turning to crowdsourcing and crowd funding to get their properties financed rather than relying on traditional sources of investment.
• The sharing economy heads to China
  After a shaky start, the sharing economy is taking off in China, with the rise of new local players in 2014, a trend boosted by the number of Chinese millennials.
• Travel for the Indian unbanked
  Travel firms are adopting cash-on-delivery payments to cater to the half a billion Indians without a bank account.
• Geopolitical tensions change numbers
  Geopolitical events such as conflicts are affecting destinations in the Middle East and North Africa, Russia and Ukraine- on actual numbers and who goes where. The normally strong Chinese economy has also struggled recently, giving rise to concerns about a hard landing.
• Mobile booking has taken off

The mobile booking channel has reached the mainstream, accounting for some US$96 billion of travel sales globally in 2014.

The medical tourism, health tourism and even wellness tourism sectors remain an insignificant proportion of global tourism and are generally ignored by the report.