The travel trends that come out at this time of the year make you want to stay at home and take a sabbatical to visit all the metro stations of the nearest large city or all the country’s “X-branded” pubs. Yet most people keep moving in herds.

The World’s Top Trending Destinations for 2018 – Infographic by Airbnb

The top trending places for 2018 include Gangneung, Edmonton, Indianapolis (Airbnb), Agadir, Victoria Falls, Cluj-Napoca (Skyscanner), Cartagena, Ljubljana, Tbilisi (Booking.com). Amazingly enough, one of the most popular experiences on Airbnb is called “Secret Concert in a Treehouse“… let’s not spread the word.

To understand what most travel companies really think and expect from you, you’d better read between the lines when they are in “B2B mode”. Take for example this revealing phrase from one of EyeforTravel’s reports:

According to Reck, GetYourGuide sees the mobile phone becoming a remote control with which travelers can select whatever they want to do in a destination at any time, with instant booking available.

Exactly, be humble, sit down, and choose your fictitious experience from the menu. This is what tours and activities today are all about. It’s kind of an old dial TV with many identical channels. The Netflixization of travel is here to stay but, of course, you can always decide to turn it off until the programming changes.

If you are a data junky like us, you will certainly appreciate the fresh Global Digital Traveler Research 2017 by Travelport, based on interviews with 11,000 travelers from 19 countries worldwide. Here’s a snapshot of the key findings.

Key Findings of the Global Digital Traveler Research – Infographic by Travelport

Taking a closer look, we were particularly impressed with the following results:

– 60% said they would be lost without their smartphone, but 43% would switch off all devices (so, at least 3% is already lost and where are the moderates here?)
– 68% of Indonesian travelers book their trip on a mobile device (jeez, really?)
– 63% of senior travelers (those over 55) “know exactly what they want” when researching a trip (the wisdom of age… yeah sure, but how sad is that?)

Anyway, the report also includes a list of the most digitally-dependent countries and the top ten are not exactly the ones you would expect. In fact, the ranking looks like this: 1) India, 2) China, 3) Indonesia, 4) Brazil, 5) Saudi Arabia, 6) Mexico, 7) South Africa, 8) United Arab Emirates, 9) Colombia, 10) Italy.

To find out more, download Travelport’s Global Digital Traveler Research.

Thanks to the popular TV show Game of Thrones, whose winter scenes mostly take place in Iceland, the country has welcomed 1.8 M foreign visitors in 2016, up 40% from 2015, and is expected to reach 2.4 M by the end of this year.

Brand Finance, that annually reveals the world’s most valuable nation brands, considers Iceland the best performer in 2017 and sums it up with an auspicious “money is coming”. There can’t be over tourism with all that space, eh? Hmm…

In case you are wondering, in the ranking, led by the US and closed by Cyprus, the worst performing nation brand is Uzbekistan. Now you decide where to go for the next holidays… The full report “Nation Brands 2017” is available here.