Planning ahead for next year? A new trends round-up from Euronews Travel's team offers a decent cheat sheet for how holidays might look in 2027 — and a few of the ideas are worth acting on now, especially if you want a front-row seat for the sky show of the decade.
The headline event is the "eclipse of the century" on 2 August 2027, the longest total solar eclipse over easily accessible land this century. Near the point of greatest eclipse in Egypt, the sun will be hidden for more than six minutes. Spain gets lucky again — Cádiz, Marbella and Málaga fall inside totality — as do Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Saudi Arabia. Add in Artemis III and Star Wars turning 50, and expect set-jetting with a nostalgic twist to filming spots like Wadi Rum, Guilin and Lake Como.
On the ground, the crowd-avoidance instinct deepens. Skift research found 42% of travellers now actively dodge overcrowded places, so the editors predict movement beyond second cities into genuinely "undertourised" spots — think Toyama in Japan rather than Tokyo, with its slow mountain hikes and local food culture. Cities like Dubrovnik, with its "Respect the City" strategy, are also trying to manage flows rather than just attract them.
China is tipped as the breakout destination, dubbed "chinamaxxing": visa-free entry for up to 30 days for citizens of nearly 80 countries, plus the new TenPayGo app that links international cards and Apple Pay, removing the old payment headache. Meanwhile Indonesia is framed as far more than Bali, with travellers increasingly frustrated by overdevelopment there and looking elsewhere in the archipelago.
Two behavioural trends stand out. The "Inception trip" — a holiday within a holiday within a holiday — sees travellers booking a base then spawning spontaneous side trips, as one writer did from the Spanish Pyrenees, driving hours to San Sebastián on the morning of August's eclipse purely to catch it. Its cousin, "Type B travel", means arriving somewhere with nothing booked and no algorithm-shaped itinerary, which more than two-thirds of tourists might welcome given they say destinations already feel familiar from social media before they arrive.
Wellness is evolving too. Longevity retreats are shifting from pampering to prevention: metabolic testing, sleep analysis, tailored nutrition and treatments like cryotherapy and hypoxia-hyperoxia training. New options include Clinique La Prairie's Phuket opening this November within a multigenerational living community, and Austria's Naturhotel Forsthofgut in Leogang, which has added a science-backed "waldSPA Health" longevity space. And if hotels all blur together — 74% of people think they do — the prediction is more stays in riads in Morocco, centuries-old Japanese ryokans with tatami floors and kaiseki dinners, or volunteer programmes trading a few hours' work for bed and board.
Who's this for? Anyone booking 2027 trips who wants to beat the crowd rather than follow it: pick an eclipse vantage point, a lesser-known city, or a stay with actual character — and maybe leave a little room in the itinerary for the trips you haven't planned yet.
First reported by Euronews Travel.
