The travel industry has changed in recent years, as a new generation of guests has come to value experiences and authenticity over traditional luxuries. With that in mind, creatives are now working to bring experiential travel to the Americas, creating unique tourism opportunities steeped in the locales and the area’s unique history.
Guests, for example, can now share a yurt on the plains with a nomadic family, or sleep amid a host of monkeys in a rainforest or jungle treehouse. These are just examples, but they are valuable to hoteliers and other tourism managers in that they provide some insights into the types of exotic adventures an authentic travel experiences that are now driving large swaths of the hospitality market.
The Impact in Big Cities and Small Towns
This shift has been well documented by hospitality experts. In fact, one can already see its effects in many hotels located in high traffic areas in large cities throughout the world.
Where developers once aimed to foster brand consistency, catering to guests who wanted to receive the same level of comfort and luxury at every stop on their trip, developers now tap into desires for something different. Newer hotels in large cities are being designed to offer unique ambience that is more often than not steeped in the natural character of the communities in which they are are located.
At times, this has manifested itself in hotels that are built within classic buildings, using repurposed materials and other touches to impress upon guests that they are staying within a piece of the local culture. At other times it has meant rebranding popular hotel names to seem more like a boutique hotel.
In the Americas now, this shift is also giving rise to something else.
What is Experiential Travel?
For those who are unfamiliar, experiential travel is a form of tourism wherein the travellers focus on experiencing a destination by connecting themselves with its cultures, way of life, nature and landscapes.
This sort of travel experience first arose in Africa, where it still remains the most popular today. For decades, wealthy travellers have stayed with luxury tents on the plains of the Serengeti in Tanzania, or within the wilderness of the Okavango Delta in Botswana as they sought to have a traditional, exciting, and perhaps even unpredictable Safari experience there.
What’s new is that hoteliers are now working to have this same type of experiential travel take hold in the Americas.
The type of experiences that guests will have will, of course, vary based on the part of the Americas they are visiting, but some examples include organic experience in the Amazon and Patagonia, with Argentina and Peru ranking as prime destinations within South America. Within the United States, this could see guests having such trips in Montana, Colorado, and the American Southwest, especially within California, Arizona, and Utah, where gorgeous national parks are plentiful.
While the scenery may vary, what is likely the same is that guided tours will give accessibility to tourists as they enjoy local familiarity and experience the genuine flavor of the areas.
Source: tophotel.news
