The way people choose to travel is shifting in ways that go beyond destination preferences.

According to forecasts from Expedia Group and Booking.com — two of the largest travel platforms in the world — travelers in 2026 are moving away from cookie-cutter itineraries and toward experiences that feel genuinely personal, slower, and more connected to the natural world.

Booking.com's annual Travel Predictions report, now in its tenth edition, surveyed over 29,000 travelers across 33 countries to map where these shifts are heading.

The picture that emerges is one of travelers who are less interested in ticking off landmarks and more interested in how a trip makes them feel.

Farm Charm and the Rise of Slow Travel

One of the most significant trends identified by Expedia is what the platform calls farm charm — a desire to unplug from urban rhythms and reconnect with nature through agricultural experiences. This includes activities like hiking, feeding farm animals, collecting fresh eggs, gardening, and harvesting produce alongside working farmers.

The numbers behind the trend are striking. Eighty-four percent of travelers surveyed expressed interest in staying on or near a farm, and mentions of farm-related experiences in guest reviews on VRBO surged 300 percent year over year.

A standout property for this trend is Wildflower Farms, part of the Auberge Resorts Collection, located in New York's Hudson Valley. Spread across 140 acres of meadows and woodland and recently awarded One Michelin Key, the property offers wildflower arranging, botanical baking experiences, and a Forage the Farm program where guests harvest produce with farmers and cook alongside the executive chef. The Great Porch anchors the property around a fire pit overlooking the Shawangunk Mountain ridge, and guests can borrow a luxury vehicle loaded with a farm-fresh picnic to explore nearby lakes, meadows, and mountain trails at their own pace.

Set-Jetting: Traveling to Where Stories Happen

The term set-jetting — visiting real locations where films or television series were filmed — has been growing since it first entered mainstream travel conversation in 2022. Expedia projects it could become an eight billion dollar industry in the United States alone.

Fifty-three percent of travelers have expressed a desire to take a set-jetting trip, and the figure rises sharply among younger travelers — 81 percent of Generation Z and Millennial travelers say they plan getaways based on what they have seen on screen. The continued travel boom to Thailand following the third season of a widely watched television anthology series is cited as one of the clearest current examples of how screen content drives real booking behavior.

Quieter Hobbies and Sensory Escapes

Running parallel to the slow travel movement is a Booking.com prediction around what the platform calls hushed hobbies — activities chosen specifically for their quietness and their connection to natural environments. Fishing, walking through vineyards, and spending time in landscapes defined by natural sound rather than human noise all fall within this category.

Twenty-five percent of travelers actively look for opportunities to take part in quieter hobbies while away, and another 21 percent specifically seek destinations that offer natural sensory experiences — birdsong, flowing water, the scent of rain on earth.

Two properties in California's Napa Valley region speak directly to this trend. Auberge du Soleil in Rutherford, awarded a prestigious Michelin 3 Key designation, and Stanly Ranch in Napa, recognized with one Michelin Key, both sit within the 16 Napa Valley appellations and offer guests direct access to vineyards, historic agricultural landscapes, and the kind of unhurried immersion in place that this type of traveler is seeking.

Romantasy Trips Inspired by Fiction

Booking.com identified an emerging category of travel inspired not by films but by books — specifically by the romance and fantasy fiction genre that has seen extraordinary readership growth in recent years. The platform calls these trips romantasy travel, and they involve itineraries built around the physical landscapes that feature in favorite novels: castles, ancient forests, ruins, and dramatic coastal settings.

Seventy-one percent of global travelers surveyed said they would be open to visiting a destination inspired by a romantasy novel. Genre-inspired itineraries are expected to grow in both volume and specificity as publishers and tourism boards begin to recognize the commercial connection between bestselling fiction and travel booking behavior.

Wellness Travel Gets More Specific

Wellness tourism is not new, but Booking.com's latest data suggests it is becoming more targeted. The platform found that 80 percent of travelers would choose a destination that offered at least one beauty or wellness treatment as part of their stay — a category the report calls a glowcation.

Beyond traditional spa offerings, this trend now includes body movement analysis, personalized exercise programs designed to address specific health concerns, and treatments aimed at reducing the physical effects of long-haul travel. Port Douglas in Australia was highlighted as a destination where world-class wellness infrastructure — including specialty skin treatments at Temple Resort and Spa — sits alongside two UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest, the oldest rainforest on the planet.

What connects all of these trends is a shift in what travelers are actually looking for. The destination matters less than the feeling — of slowing down, of being somewhere that means something personally, of returning home with an experience rather than simply a location checked off a list. The travel industry is catching up to that shift, and 2026 looks like the year it becomes the mainstream expectation rather than the niche exception.