Dear AST friend,

We’d like to thank our panelists and the 230 leaders who joined us live at Asia Travel Future Summit yesterday.

If you missed it, don’t worry. We’ll be publishing a key takeaways article, and the full recording will be available exclusively to AST Trailblazers.

If you haven’t joined our membership yet, we invite you to take that step today — the insights, access, and tools we’re building will help you navigate 2026 with clarity and confidence. Link below. 👇

In this week’s AST Briefing, we’re spotlighting the top 5 trends that will shape our industry in 2026.

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From Choice Simplification to Cosmic Itineraries: The 5 Trends Redefining Travel in 2026 

Travelers in 2026 are fundamentally different from those a decade ago. Findings from the Lemongrass Marketing Travel Trend Report 2026 and Booking.com’s “Era of You” show people entering this year with new psychological drivers shaped by cognitive overload, climate anxiety, identity change, and a clearer expectation that travel should align with their values and emotional needs.

These shifts are already shaping how travelers plan, choose, spend, and evaluate. In Asia, the world’s fastest-growing and most culturally diverse tourism region, the implications are immediate and profound.

The following five structural shifts will likely define the travel industry in 2026.

1. Decision fatigue is changing how people travel. 

Travel planning has evolved into a high-effort exercise: comparing dozens of hotels, navigating group preferences, and assembling itineraries from endless online recommendations. The pressure to design an “ideal trip” now mirrors the cognitive load of work life.

Lemongrass identifies this as a “decision detox” moment, with travelers increasingly delegating choices to trusted operators, all-inclusive models, and curated programs that remove complexity rather than add to it.

Booking.com’s “Hushed Hobbies” underscores how this extends into the trip itself. 43% say they would take a vacation specifically to feel closer to the natural world, while one in four (25%) are turning to quieter, slower hobbies in search of calm.

These trends reflect a broader demand for frictionless travel: fewer decisions, clearer options, and experiences that don’t need constant navigation. 

Across Asia, brands that simplify the journey through streamlined stay packages, modular itineraries, and human-led curation appear to be outperforming those that rely on abundant choice.

REVĪVŌ Wellness Resort, Fivelements Retreat, and Bagus Jati in Bali exemplify this shift by offering structured, restorative programs that eliminate decision fatigue and allow guests to focus on rest, not planning.

Strategic implication: 

• The new competitive advantage is reducing cognitive load. 

• Clarity outranks variety.

2. Travellers cautiously, increasingly seek places not yet defined by the algorithm. 

More travelers are turning away from destinations that feel overly curated or algorithm-defined. 

Lemongrass notes that while iconic cities still attract demand, travelers now pair them with second cities and lesser-visited regions — Tokyo with Kiso Valley, Seoul with Gangwon-do, Bali with Lombok or Sumba — to avoid crowds, rising costs, and the monotony of seeing the same “Top 10” spots repeated online.

Booking.com’s “Destined-ations” adds a revealing layer: nearly half of travelers say they would alter or cancel plans based on horoscopes, spiritual advice, or cosmic timing.

This is accelerating interest in spiritually significant destinations across Asia, including Japan’s sacred mountains, India’s temple circuits, and Indonesia’s healing centers.

Together, these insights show a clear pattern: more travelers are rejecting algorithmic sameness and pursuing destinations that feel self-directed, spiritually aligned, and distinct from mass-market itineraries. 

Strategic implication: 

• For Asia’s tourism leaders, this underscores the need to develop and promote lesser-known and underserved regions and preserve cultural authenticity beyond what social media rewards.

3. Travel is becoming a marker for key life milestones. 

An increasing number of travelers are no longer confined to making trips around honeymoons or birthdays. 

Lemongrass highlights demand for trips centered on mental health, menopause, neurodiversity, grief, aging, and major transitions. Travelers increasingly want experiences that support emotional and physical needs — from slow cycling retreats for peri-menopausal women to intergenerational craft trips or creative sabbaticals for neurodiverse adults.

Travel, in this context, becomes a tool for self-understanding and recalibration, not just leisure.

Booking.com’s “Modern Milestone Missions” confirms the trend. 67% of travelers say that they no longer need a reason to book a trip, and 75% believe working hard is reason enough. New triggers are emerging: promotions, tax refunds, breakups, sobriety, and fitness transformations.

Travel is becoming a recognized way to mark progress, process change, or reward effort.

These insights show that 2026 could be the year in which travel manifests as a life-stage companion. Whether someone is recovering, celebrating, transitioning, or reconnecting, they are using travel to acknowledge moments that matter to them personally. 

Strategic implication: 

• This shift represents a significant opportunity to design experiences that are emotionally attuned, inclusive, and aligned with the diverse milestones travelers are now empowered to celebrate on their own terms.

4. Tech & AI: Quiet Infrastructure Meets Visible Automation

AI in travel is moving past hype and into purposeful application. Both the Lemongrass Marketing 2026 report and Booking.com’s “Era of You” show that one of the most consequential roles of the technology is not in replacing people, but in fixing the parts of the travel ecosystem that are inefficient, carbon-intensive, or operationally strained.

→ Learn more about why this trend matters in 2026.

5. Regeneration has replaced sustainability as the benchmark of credibility.

The need for regeneration is especially urgent in Asia, where overtourism has pushed destinations like Kyoto, Bali, and Phuket toward ecological and cultural thresholds. The issue is no longer whether overtourism exists, but whether these places can remain viable without systemic reform.

→ Discover which island destination is leading the way in regenerating its environmental assets.

Sign up for AST Webinar, “Is Triple Win Possible? Guests Return, People Prosper, Nature Thrives”

As travel businesses face growing pressure to deliver memorable guest experiences while uplifting communities and restoring ecosystems, a central question emerges: Can tourism truly achieve a triple win?

Join this AST Webinar as leading practitioners, innovators, and destination stewards break down what “triple-win tourism” looks like in practice — from regenerative business models and community partnerships to biodiversity restoration and long-term value creation.

You’ll learn practical frameworks, proven case studies, and tools to design experiences that inspire repeat guests, strengthen local livelihoods, and restore nature.

Be part of the live conversation as we move beyond theory, challenge outdated assumptions, and highlight business cases showing that tourism can and must create enduring value across the entire chain.

Speaker lineup coming soon.

Date: 22 January 2026

Time: 4:00–5:00 PM UTC+8

Access insights, tools, and connections to lead the sustainability agenda in travel

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