Travel predictions for 2022: Slow travel and faster heartbeats

Hospitality Daily is a summary of stories for busy people who want to get better each day at providing hospitality.

Today, you’ll find:

• Travel predictions for 2022

• Accor’s focus on food sustainability

• COVID testing as a new amenity

Travel predictions for 2022: Slow travel and faster heartbeats

“As long as we’re alive, there will be travel,” says Ian Schrager, legendary hotelier and Studio 54 co-founder. “No question about it. I can’t tell you when it will get back to where it was, but it’s not going to be very long.”

How we travel, however, will most certainly be “slower and longer,” says London travel PR expert Julia Perowne. This summer might have been about “fly and flop” destinations closer to home, but next year, she knows families are already plotting big bucket-list adventures to do together, possibly with three, even four, generations in tow. “Travel will be about getting to a place and really enjoying it – staying for seven or eight nights.”

According to David Prior, a former travel editor who now runs Prior, a travel club, the future of travel as he sees it, will be about “connection and curiosity.” As it becomes safer to move around the world, “people will want to return to that experiential kind of travel, where they take it a little slower, go to fewer places on a trip, or really go to one place and become completely immersed,” he says. “They’ll want all their senses engaged.”“While we’re social animals and want to be around people, and hotels are gathering points for social interaction, we will see subtle ways in changing the hotel experience to help guests feel comfortable and safe,” says hotel designer Glenn Pushelberg, co-founder of the Yabu Pushelberg, the design practice behind the interiors of new hotels The Londoner in Leicester Square and Bishopsgate’s Pan Pacific London.

Schrager insists that we’ll want to be somewhere that makes us feel good. “Your heart should beat a little faster, your senses should be stimulated.” And as a hotelier, “you’re not just selling sleep, you’re trying to capture a microcosm of the best of what that city has to offer right there in that hotel,” he says.

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Accor focusing on food sustainability through urban vegetable gardens and more

The Covid crisis has underscored the fragility of the global food system, including the ways we produce, consume and waste food. Today the issue for everyone is identifying best practices to create a healthier world of catering that's more respectful of resources.

With more than more than 10,000 restaurants serving more than 200 million meals per year, Accor is in a position to make a change towards sustainability and has rolled out 9 commitments to be followed at all its locations. One of these steps is providing healthy, local & sustainable produce through the creation of vegetable gardens and urban farms. Worldwide, over 1,200 Accor sites have set up their own urban vegetable gardens, with the benefits enriching the whole guest experience.

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Caribbean resort buys a Covid-test machine

To alleviate the 48-hour quarantine that the government of St. Vincent and The Grenadines requires for all visitors arriving by air, Palm Island Resort on the southern tip of the Grenadine archipelago purchased its own PCR testing machine.

"While this was a significant investment, we acknowledged that in order to encourage a seamless travel experience for our guests, it was a necessity," said James Lane, the resort's owner.

Guests traveling to Palm Island can now be tested prior to the five-minute boat ride to the property. Upon arrival, they are whisked to their room for a room-service dinner, and by the next midmorning, the quarantine is lifted provided that test results are negative.

I’m curious if we’ll see testing-as-an-amenity become more common in other locations to alleviate travel concerns.

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