Travel in 2027: Notes from the Condé Nast Traveller Points of View Summit

The definition of luxury has changed

Nick Jones, founder of Soho House and now the St Clement hotel in London, said the definition of luxury has changed. It’s no longer marble and high heels. It’s cashmere, being greeted by your first name, and service that runs smoothly. It’s feeling at home. At St Clement, he wanted to put the guest and the team at the forefront of every decision and this was something that resonated with us. Red Dot Tours has always put people first, whether it’s our all-female sales team in a country where women are traditionally underrepresented in tourism, or our commitment to using local guides and locally-owned properties where possible. 

For us, luxury also means time well spent. It’s the afternoon that wasn’t in the plan, the host who remembers how you take your tea. It was a message that ran throughout the day - luxury is no longer about loud extravagance. It’s about access to experiences, encounters and memories, about travel as a bonding experience rather than simply a chance to soak in the sun on a lounger. 

AI gives you average

One of the sharpest lines of the day was about AI. It may have a place in travel, for instance in streamlining administrative tasks, but it gives you the average, a recommendation based on how many strangers wrote a good review. What we want, the panel agreed, is a friend who knows us inside out and says, “I just know you’ll love this place.” 

It’s what we’ve always done - taking the time to get to know our clients and their likes, dislikes, needs and taste means we can recommend experiences and properties we know you’ll love. And those experiences and properties aren’t plucked off Google or ChatGPT. They’re ones we know inside out; we’ve tried them, visited them, stayed in them. In many cases we know the owners or have built relationships over many years with the guides. That’s the difference AI can’t provide.

The panel also stressed that personalisation depends on knowing your guests: where they’ve travelled before, how they like to travel, their tastes, their needs. That’s simply how our consultants work. Our Travel Designers plan each trip around the person travelling, and no algorithm can replace that conversation. 

Go slower, see more, hear more, feel more

Jenny Southan of Globetrender had a wish for the year ahead: retire “tripmaxxing” and every other “maxxing”. Slow down instead. As she said, this is how you ‘see more, hear more, feel more’. It’s the best travel advice we heard all day, and one we’d happily put on a postcard.

It’s also how we like to travel. Trips with room to breathe and time to get to know a place through the people who live there. Her Pekoe Trail pick is also a Red Dot favourite, especially with a female guide from the local area who can provide an insight into life in Sri Lanka's tea country.

Making 'sustainability' count

The panel also wanted to leave the word ‘sustainability’ as purely a buzzword behind in 2026. As they noted, it’s become something which can be thrown around with talk about removing plastic bottles, but too often doesn’t go much further. Instead, they suggested we should be talking about how travel can benefit local communities. We’d agree. Our trips are built on relationships with small producers, farmers, guides and hotels, from picking spices with a cinnamon farmer to taking tea with a hermit monk. We’re proud that almost 80% of our team is based in Sri Lanka - not only does this provide employment in the country, but it keeps the revenue in-country too so it continues to benefit the local economy. For every booking to Sri Lanka we make a donation to the Tea Leaf Trust, we’re members of The Conscious Travel Foundation, and we hold a firm line that wildlife is not entertainment. 

Secret seekers, and trips across the generations

A few trends from the day will feel familiar to anyone who’s talked to us about travel lately:

• Multigenerational trips. Families are choosing to spend money on making memories together, rather than simply passing money on as inheritance. Grandparents are building trips around their families, with time together at their heart. Creating trips that suit all ages takes a careful hand - from journey times to activity levels, we focus on striking the perfect balance so that one holiday works for every family member, whether they’re 8, 18 or 80.
• Micro-retirements. People are travelling in the gaps between jobs or portfolio careers, which suits longer, slower journeys. It’s where our specialist knowledge comes in well - planning longer trips that veer off the well-trodden routes to places that don’t make it into the guidebook, but fully deserve their place on any itinerary.
• Solo female travellers. This is a group we know well and which our all-female team is perfectly set up for. Women designing trips for women means we know what’s important, from safety concerns to finding the owner-run hotel where you’ll be welcomed as a friend, or the chauffeur-guide who’ll set you at ease and become a trusted confidante in no time.
• Secret seekers. Travellers who want to feel they’ve found a hidden gem. Luxury, as one panellist put it, is something you can’t find online. It’s completely curated for you and it’s where our little black book of contacts built up over 25 years comes in handy.

Booking closer to departure

In an uncertain world, more people are booking nearer to their travel date, wanting to know their destination is settled. But the panel was clear that the desire to travel is still there, and is greater than ever.  Our ATOL and ABTOT protection give you peace of mind, but our local teams also keep a close eye on what’s happening on the ground, so you can plan ahead with confidence. And if anything comes up, we have one team in Sri Lanka and another in the UK, along with trusted partners across our destinations, so there’s always someone available to pick up the phone and find a solution. 

And finally, a chance to log off

One question we keep returning to: what does travel look like in a world of AI and change? For us, it means greater focus on human connection. AI and tech can streamline some of the smaller booking details, but it can never replace recommendations based on first-hand experience and tailored solely for you.

And when you’re in the country, being able to switch off your phone and hand over control to an expert means you can switch off too. You can tune into the birdsong rather than a ringtone. Read a book rather than scrolling. Feel the mountain mists as you walk through tea plantations. Spend time talking about the day’s experiences rather than checking emails. 

If any of this made you think about your own next trip, we’d love to hear from you. Tell us what you want to see, hear and feel, and we’ll take it from there.