TRAVEL GUIDE Travel 2020

The dawn of a new decade. What will it hold? There will be more than 1.5 billion “international tourist arrivals” in 2020, as we continue to travel the globe looking for meaningful and authentic experiences, or just a great holiday.

Tech developments, Trump, Brexit, “over-tourism”, climate change, plastics. There’s a lot going on. But, on the other hand, it remains as simple as this… people — you and me — just wanting to experience the world around us. And this will be what drives us in 2020…

• The land of the rising sun certainly continues to rise in tourism terms. And the five rings will put Japan under an even brighter spotlight in 2020, as it hosts the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics
• The latest figures show that in the first half of 2019, tourism income rose more than 35 per cent in Egypt. World Tourism and Travel Council data charts the remarkable recovery of tourism in Egypt over the past year, with an expected total of 11.7 million visitors.
• This year (2019), we’ve seen the Spaceport America departure lounge, and Virgin Galactic is in the blocks ready to take travellers on 90-minute sub-orbital trips into space. Virgin Space Ship Unity will be taking off early in 2020, barring setbacks.
• There are parts of the world where talk about vegan eating and lifestyle is becoming as mainstream as talk about climate change (and hand in hand, of course). The UK supermarket chain Sainsbury has found in a survey that a quarter of British citizens will be vegetarian or vegan by 2025.
• We’ve recently written about cool apartment hotels in old mills and warehouses in Manchester, and the progression in more personalised accommodation will continue in 2020.
• Celebrity Apex, Carnival Mardi Gras, Enchanted Princess, MSC Virtuosa, P&O’s Iona. They are just some of the cruise ships due on the water in 2020, joining Norwegian Encore, Carnival Panorama, Celebrity Flora, Scenic Eclipse, MS Roald Amundsen and a load of others in 2019.
• One of the trends in 2020 will come from better access to the USA. The shining example is the continued development of routes by Singapore Airlines. Less than five hours to Singapore and we connect direct to Newark (New York), Los Angeles, San Francisco, Honolulu and Seattle.
• “Wellness” is an all-encompassing word which covers all of these, and everything from healthy food to exercise, meditation and, well, just peace and quiet. And “wellness” is seen as one of the big travel trends of 2020, as it is estimated that international wellness tourists will spend, on average, 53 per cent more than regular tourers.

This is an edited version of the original, full-length story, which you can read here.

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