The rise of meaningful travel is prompting visitors and destinations alike to rethink traditional travel formats—ushering in the next era of tourism. “In 2021, the question we’ll ask our clients is: ‘If you could only travel once a year or less, what would you do differently?’” Philippe Brown, travel consultant and author of Revisit: The New Art of Luxury Travel, tells Wunderman Thompson Intelligence. “We expect clients to take [2020’s] introspection, reflections and dreams, break with their old mindset and ways of traveling, and consider new approaches.”
Iceland is redesigning the tourist experience to protect both its land and its visitors—encouraging them to visit destinations that are off the beaten path, to prevent ecological damage from over-tourism and to better enforce social distancing. “The growth we saw in the number of visitors up to 2019 was far too rapid and we were getting close to the edge of seriously unsustainable development,” Tryggvi Felixson, a tour guide and Chair of Landvernd, the Icelandic Environment Association, told Conde Nast Traveler. “We are fortunate that Iceland is a relatively big country. It’s possible to distribute the traffic more evenly than we have done before.”