New travel motivations in Europe: trend destinations in 2024

Mabrian, a leading tourism intelligence company, has presented its latest analysis on the evolution of travel motivations for 2024, placing a specific focus on the evolution of trends to visit Europe and on the destinations that project better prospects for the coming year. . The study, carried out using advanced methodologies that include traveler sentiment analysis through active listening on social networks and transactional data on future air connectivity, offers a vision of trends in tourist interests in Europe and the best positioned destinations.

Mabrian's analysis identifies a global increase in experiential travel, reflected especially in Europe, and more specifically in active and natural tourism. The countries of northern Europe are leading this change and are positioned as those that can best take advantage of these new demand trends. For its part, Italy tops the list of potential trending destinations for 2024, followed by France and Germany. The Piedmont region in Italy, New Aquitaine in France and the East of England stand out as the top three destinations, highlighting interest in a mix of cultural, natural and gastronomic attractions with solid air connectivity.  

Key takeaways for 2024

Some of the main conclusions of Mabrian's analysis focus on the global increase in experiential travel in European destinations, offering a new travel landscape:

1. Towards experiential travel: Mabrian's analysis indicates a global trend towards more experiential and less conventional travel motivations, with an 8% increase in experiential travel since 2019. Experiential tourism includes active, natural, gastronomic and recreational activities. well-being, while conventional tourism includes culture, sun and sand, family activities, nightlife and shopping.

2. New European trends reflecting global change: Europe has experienced an equivalent 8% growth in experiential activities from 2019 to 2023, reducing the prominence of conventional motivations. Active and natural tourism emerges as the fastest growing, gaining 5 and 3 percentage points, respectively.

3. Countries best positioned for experiential tourism: Northern European countries, including Iceland, Norway, Finland, Slovenia and Switzerland, are best positioned to capitalize on the growing demand for experiential activities,
with a share of more than 60% in the interest of visitors.

4. Possible trending destinations for 2024: Mabrian identifies Italy as the leading country with the most potential destinations (four), followed by France and Germany with two each. The top 10 destinations for 2024 also include the United Kingdom and Portugal.

Top 3 trending destinations:

1. Piedmont Region, Italy: Highlighted by destinations such as Turin, Stresa and Alba, Piedmont is distinguished by a balance between cultural and natural offerings. Gastronomic experiences stand out among experiential motivations, along with positive trends in air accessibility

2. New Aquitaine, France: With destinations such as Bordeaux, Biarritz and Limoges, this region stands out for its wine and gastronomic products along with active tourism. The region has good and stable air connectivity.

3. East of England, United Kingdom: Including Cambridge, Essex and Norfolk, this region strikes a balance between cultural and natural offerings, positioning it as a growing destination. Its solid and stable connectivity further supports its appeal.

4. To close the top 10 trend destinations, the following stand out: Occitania (France), Campania (Italy), North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany), Lombardy (Italy), Emilia-Romana (Italy), the province of Hamburg (Germany ) and the province of Lisbon (Portugal).

For this study, more than 380 million tourist mentions from the period between January and October of this year have been analyzed, and they have been compared with the previous four years. This technique analyzes spontaneous conversations related to travel on social networks (Big Data) through Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing, to interpret what motivates travelers to visit a place. In addition, to identify destinations that will potentially be trending in the coming months, future transactional air connectivity data has been used.

In conclusion, Mabrian's 2024 holdings analysis shows a dynamic shift towards experiential travel globally and specifically in Europe, highlighting Italy, France and Germany as key players in upcoming travel trends in 2024.  

Carlos Cendra, CMO of Mabrian, comments that “Although today it is difficult to generalize the trends, with so much disparity in segments and interests, it is important to identify the global and structural change in travel motivations, especially of the new generations. Each destination has its own and differentiated characteristics and tourist offer, but everyone must pay attention to the evolution of travelers' motivations and work to adapt their offer in the most agile way possible, since competition is global and growing. 

Source: Mabrian.