In a world craving meaning, the middle ground of tourism is disappearing, forcing brands to choose: are you a facilitator of frictionless ease or a catalyst for profound transformation?
VML's "Future 100: 2026" Travel vertical cut is your guide to navigating this polarized landscape. Featuring our 10 leading industry trends for the year ahead, gain expert insights into the intentional, transformative, and tech-driven trends that are reshaping guest expectations. Position your brand to win by understanding the forces driving the future, from AI-powered logistics to the rise of the purposeful traveler.
The Future 100: Travel Trends & Insights 2026
VML’s Future 100 vertical cut reveals our 10 key trends for the year ahead including transformative journeys, endurance travel and AI's impact on hospitality
Today's travelers aren't just seeking a change of scenery – they're seeking a change of self.
Top trends in Travel from our Future 100 report include:
#21: Endurance travel
Discover why a growing cohort of travelers is rejecting relaxation in favor of "breakthroughs," booking vacations centered on extreme physical challenges to test their limits and reset their minds.
#29: World-building hospitality
Learn how hotels are evolving from places to sleep into immersive narrative ecosystems, where guests inhabit a brand's curated story through sound, scent and design.
#68: Acommerce
Understand how AI agents are taking over travel planning and booking, requiring travel brands to optimize their services and marketing for algorithmic discovery and machine-to-machine interaction.
Download our 2026 Future 100 Travel vertical cut here:
The biggest shift is the move from simple getaways to intentional, transformative journeys. Travelers are polarizing towards either extreme endurance challenges or hyper-efficient "Nano trips," seeking either self-change or maximum experience with minimal friction.
The trend of "World-building hospitality" shows that hotels must become immersive narrative ecosystems. To compete, they are creating unique, curated worlds with distinct stories, scents and designs to offer guests a memorable, transformative experience rather than just a room.
AI is driving "Acommerce," where intelligent agents autonomously plan itineraries, book flights and manage logistics. This requires travel and hospitality brands to learn how to market to machines and optimize for algorithmic discovery, not just human search.
Watch our Future 100 video
Welcome to the 12th edition of “The Future 100” – VML’s unparalleled research report examining key global trends. This report features our latest projections, interviews with top industry experts, exclusive statistics and global consumer insights for 2026 from a proprietary 16-country survey.
About The Future 100 report:
After another year marked by economic upheaval, polarizing political currents and environmental setbacks, 2026 will be a year for building resilience, courageous creativity and redrawing the boundaries of what’s possible. From the personal to the planetary, from human engineering to geoengineering the climate itself, a new class of creators and collaborators is multiplying potential in ways we are just beginning to imagine.
Helping to shape these worlds are AI tools that democratize world building and new economic models for building empires. As both creativity and AI go global, voices from Buenos Aires to Busan are challenging Western dominance and creating tools that reflect their own cultures.
Amidst this “metamorphic” current, the desire for human connection remains unmistakable. In the year ahead, human impulse will shape brand strategies, influencing the top marketing trends in 2026, and draw people back to immersive, high-impact experiences that demonstrate the value of authenticity and unlock infinite possibilities.
Download your copy of our 2026 Future 100 report here:
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