Travel & Hospitality in 2021
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As talk about Covid-19's impact on travel quietened down, this year discussions about travel’s planetary impact become much louder. It was also the year that our Sustainability Futures report shed light on the opportunity to demystify and quantify eco-consciousness, a theme first explored in our Post-conscious Travel microtrend.

With 81% of global respondents saying they wanted to be more sustainable in 2021, according to Garnier, consumers and companies alike moved away from the encouragement of gratuitous destination-hopping and refocused their behaviours on planetary and social good. But sustainability has a language problem, which is why a new wave of innovators are trading in buzzwords to redefine what it means to travel consciously.

Trippin’s report replaced the term ‘sustainable travel’ with ‘purposeful travel’, addressing the lack of intersectionality in the sustainability movement. Then there’s the fact that the travel sector has recognised the role of regeneration – which offers a more tangible approach to sustainability that can be measured. Regenerative Travel has open-sourced a white paper that publishes data points for hotels to measure their planetary and social impact.

As part of the growing movement towards Traveltainment, South Korea used creative marketing tools to welcome international tourists back to its shores, capitalising on the country’s influence in the global music scene with the blockbuster campaign, Feel the Rhythm of Korea.

The national genre of K-pop has been arguably one of the country’s most successful exports, with interest clustering in Southeast Asia, which boasts 80% of the genre’s Spotify listeners (source: Chartmetric). Dubbed Hallyu travel – which refers to the wave of Korean culture spreading over the world – the country’s tourism organisation estimates that such tourism accounted for 7.4% of all inbound visitors in 2019 (source: Korea Tourism Organization).

Now that borders have re-opened, the country has been on a mission to reclaim that share. The first-of-its-kind campaign comprised a series of eight videos, each with an original soundtrack of modernised versions of traditional folk songs, shot in diverse spots around the country. The ads, which aimed to show how South Korea’s music culture is in no way restricted to K-pop, have since attracted more than 240m views on YouTube, making it a hugely successful global tourism push amid the pandemic.

Elastic hospitality came to Copenhagen in September, as design company Vipp opened a concept space that can morph in line with the demands of its locals.

Catering for the need for more experiential and fluctuating spaces, the Vipp Pencil Factory – which takes its name from its previous industrial use – hosts a roster of chefs to create intimate dinners and supper clubs. A large banquet venue in the centre of the space can seat up to 26 guests, who also enjoy musical entertainment chosen to complement each meal.

The multiple use cases of this space allow Vipp to engage with its audience in a variety of ways. By doing so, the brand sets an example for future hybrid spaces that can be shaped to suit the diverse hospitality needs of communities. ‘It’s not a restaurant,’ says Kasper Egelund, CEO of Vipp. ‘But we do invite spectacular chefs to cook intimate dinners. Nor is it a nightclub, but we do invite talented musicians to play a tune. Nor is it a showroom, but we have invited renowned designers and artists to sharpen up the venue.’

Now that you know what shaped 2021, discover what’s on the horizon. Download our Future Forecast 2022 report comprising 50 new trends across 10 key consumer sectors, insights from our analysts and interviews with global innovators.