Future of travel: understanding shifting mindsets, planning behaviours, and destination preferences

The word uncertainty has been used with regularity during 2025 to describe the travel sector. In fact, the aviation industry is in the middle of a paradoxical situation, with uncertainty both growing and diminishing at the same time.

Travel is more 'normal' than it has been since air travel plummeted by more than 90% in early 2020 with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the ensuing five years fears (or hopes) of permanent structural shifts in aviation have all but evaporated.

Global travel patterns have, with a few exceptions, returned to what they once were. The air travel industry is enjoying consistently strong demand, near record profitability, increasingly stable operational performance and more visibility around major cost inputs such as fuel, labour and raw materials.

At the same time, the industry faces a global outlook that is increasingly uncertain.

Following the 'Year of the Elections' in 2024, where more than 3.7 billion people across more than 70 countries participated in elections that decided national governments, 2025 was always going to bring some change.

On top of this, the world is experiencing a growing risk environment.

Geopolitical tensions and state-based armed conflicts are growing in number and scale. Societal and political polarisation continue to spread, underpinned by the production of misinformation and disinformation. This is exacerbated by rising wealth inequality, and then accelerated by the ever-increasing scale and pace of technological advancement.