What to expect from the world of travel in 2025!

A €7 VISA to visit Europe, Bravecations, Holy Doors, Oasis, AI, train travel and more crowd control. A new year heralds a set of fresh adventures and trends

A €7 VISA to visit Europe, Bravecations, Holy Doors, Oasis, AI, train travel and more crowd control. A new year heralds a set of fresh adventures and trends. This is the real holiday season when we gather our weapons – passport, wallet and laptop – to book a summer getaway. With 2025 well under way, predictions from the travel industry and experts are coming in thick and fast. There’s lots to talk about – gather round.

A POSTCARD FROM 2025

ONE holiday or two? We’re on for five in 2025 according to the Marriott hotel group. To be clear that’ll be one long-haul, two short-haul trips and two staycations.

The surveys, polls and predictions have all been attempting to forecast what lies ahead. Last year the travel trends were named by Neilson Beach Clubs as sportcation and relactive, that wasn’t a typo, it was relax and be active, all at the same time.

Also popular was the solo-moon, which was going away alone – but with a group. Then there was set-jetting based on travel to a film-set location and destination dupes where we went on an alternative hotspot that was much cheaper than the Insta-crowded location… Enter Albania for its “Italian” and “Maldives” vibes … There was tour tourism where we travelled to see bands perform such as Taylor Swift, who was on her Eras Tour. The last trend was dry tripping – an alcohol-free trip – a shift on from wellness.

But back to 2025, the Marriott Ticket to Travel survey includes travellers seeking Bravecations, this is where you do something that scares you, like climbing or having a conversation with strangers – yes, that’s their definition of scary. And, another emerging travel trend they’ve spotted is Heritage Holidays, where people travel to “find out where they come from”. It’s all been in The Times.

easyJet has identified 15 key themes including low-cost luxury, where you travel first-class but to affordable destinations like Latvia, Jetflix and Chill, where you visit a film location, holiday hopping to multiple destinations, nostalgia trips, gourmet getaways, country ticking, and small city breaks. Here is the full list.

According to Travelodge the majority of travellers this year are booking a holiday for June. Their research also reveals that most of us will travel for 10 days at a cost of £1,449.

Elsewhere, Hungary has been named a top “destination to watch” by travel agent group Abta for its countryside, food, wine, and prices that won’t break the bank. They also recommend Belize, Denmark, Quebec, Tasmania, Hokkaido island in northern Japan, Le Marche in central Italy and Oviedo in northern Spain.

Four in five of us plan to spend the same or more on holidays in 2025 as we did in the past 12 months. And more than half (55 per cent) ranked holidays as our top spending priority. And nearly 29 per cent said they plan to increase their travel spending, according to Travel Counsellors. The survey also revealed a growing preference for multi-destination trips.

EVENTS TO WATCH OUT FOR

THE HOLY Doors. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience historic cathedrals. As 2025 ushers in with promises of new beginnings, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity awaits for travellers looking for some spiritual nourishment as cathedrals open their Holy Doors – something that happens just once every 25 years.

If you appreciate the architecture and that feeling of awe you get inside a cathedral then remember 2025 is an extraordinary year.

Millions of people are expected to travel to Rome to walk through the sacred bronze doors in this Jubilee Year. They are in fact now open and will close in November 2025. Don’t wait another quarter of a century to miss this opportunity.

The religious symbolism is to walk from sin into grace but non-believers and curious travellers can also walk through these doors if you’re seeking a rare spiritual moment for renewal and transformation.

Not all cathedrals have a Holy Door. There are four in Rome, including the Vatican, then there are just six across the globe. In Spain: Santiago de Compostela, Canada: Notre Dame in Quebec, France: Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, US: Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Mexico: Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and India: Basilica of Bom Jesus in Old Goa.

We walked through the holy door in Quebec having never heard of Holy Doors and hoped it’d done us some good.

BRADFORD has become the UK City of Culture. We’ve had a first sneak peek of the events we can expect to see as part of the year-long celebrations, costing £45 million, in this West Yorkshire city.

There will be projects led by local celebrities including artist David Hockney who wants to get us all drawing. Magician Dynamo, real name Steven Frayne, will be taking part and there will also be a musical extravaganza by Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller.

Bradford Council leader Susan Hinchcliffe had told the BBC: “David Hockney, one of Bradford’s sons, is really important for us. It’s wonderful that he’s part of it. And of course the opening ceremony, I’m really excited about that. Dynamo. Who knows what’s going to happen? Who knows what he’s going to conjure up out of thin air.” Events start this month.

THE event of the year is the Oasis concerts which kick off in July.

It was in August last year that Oasis announced their long-awaited comeback with a reunion Live 25 tour. At first, no one quite believed that brothers Liam and Noel had really buried the hatchet having fallen out in 2009. But, they announced gigs in Cardiff, Manchester, Dublin, Edinburgh and London for July and August.

Within hours hotel prices shot through the roof as fans scrambled to book rooms despite concert tickets not even being on sale. For the shows in Murrayfield rooms in Edinburgh had already reached £1,000. And the dates run the same time as the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe.

In Manchester, the Maldron Hotels were accused of cancelling pre-existing bookings so they could resell rooms at a higher price. It denied this, blaming a “technical error with our booking system”. PA Media went mad for it!

Anything else? Yes, all concert tickets started from around £70, then they went through the roof and caused a furore.

Also on tour this year are Ed Sheeran, Coldplay, Bruce Springsteen and Dua Lipa.

AI

NO HOLIDAY booked, no research done— forget Google, AI will handle everything, in seconds. If God created the world in six days, AI could do it in six seconds. To many this is frightening. But fear not, artificial intelligence is not quite ready to take over the world but it can take over booking your holiday. And it’ll do it all in a nanosecond.

Imagine this: It’s July and you haven’t used any of your annual leave and worse, you haven’t even thought about booking a holiday. Don’t panic. Time might not be on your side but AI is. You’ve been on TikTok and seen a trip to Zanzibar but you don’t know where to start researching and it’s probably too expensive. Forget Google. What?

Yep, expert Joshua Ryan-Saha at Edinburgh Futures Institute has predicted how platforms such as ChatGPT will change how we use the internet with travel being one of the first industries to transform. Name your destination, budget and dates and it’ll find the best flight and hotel prices in real-time, fill in all the paperwork and check-in for you. Woah!

AI is already embedded into many booking websites but mainly used as chatboxes for customer services. It’s also often working in the background to read our emails and respond. Soon it’ll help us book trips and become our personal travel agents. It will be able to learn from your past holidays, where you like to stay and suggest options. It’ll also be able to take over the booking process and ensure everything is on budget. If your flight is delayed, it can book you on another, if not it will find you a nearby hotel to ensure you have somewhere to stay.

Expedia already has a trip planning AI assistant called Romie – and many more are on the way especially from airlines. Also expect more AI at museums. Microsoft has also created an AI-interactive version of the Vatican for a new digital flock to visit virtually. There will also be AI services at St. Peter’s Basilica for the Catholic Church’s Holy Year, also known as Jubilee celebrations, in 2025, which comes around every 25 years. This is when Holy Doors at churches all around the world open and many will make pilgrimages to walk through them for renewal and forgiveness. Take a look on Reuters.

Some AI platforms will even take the photos and videos you’ve seen on social media and create a map with all the locations marked out and organise it into a personal itinerary. It’ll go way beyond the Top 10 places to see or eat. It’ll alert you to what’s new or trending in a city on a particular day so you don’t miss a beat or follow a robotic route. Or if you feel like having a duvet day, it’ll rejig your plans. And you won’t have to type any of this, you can talk to it. All you’ll be left to do is pack!

TAKE THE TRAIN FOR EUROPEAN BREAKS

Rail against the planes and take the train if you’re heading off to Europe. That’s the message from scientists looking to cut carbon emissions.

Researchers at Leeds University’s Institute for Transport Studies suggest that if holidaymakers aren’t really bothered about which beach they lie on, and are just after a good ol’ time, they should jump on a train to mainland Spain. There’s no need to fly to the Balearics or the Canaries, they say. Malaga offers the same as Magaluf without destroying the planet. Destination switching could be the answer.

Their research also revealed that more than half of Britons take a trip to nearby countries such as Spain, Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands – all of which are accessible by rail.

But, by recognising that trains are slower and more expensive than planes, they want to see more rail-package holidays for sale, not just cheap flight deals.

Dr Malcolm Morgan: “It is already possible to have breakfast in London, lunch in Paris, and dinner in Barcelona by train today. Sleeper trains could also comfortably make the journey from British cities to many Mediterranean destinations in a single night.”

Stay close to home, says Dr Sally Cairns. “People can make a big difference to their personal carbon footprint by choosing closer holiday destinations. And the Government needs to start taxing aviation fairly, to make alternative travel options like rail more attractive.”

Five cities to visit by train: Bruges – 3.5hrs from St Pancras – Antwerp, Budapest, Vienna and Venice. We took a two-week journey that started in London St Pancras and whizzed over to Belgium and then to Central Europe. Much of the trip was on the fly and spontaneous. We let ourselves be seduced by where we were and what was around us. The best bit? The moment we saw Venice for the first time. Goosebumps. Is this a real place? Arriving by train is perfect for that first impression. A kingdom of palatial buildings is there outside the station doors. The water taxis rush by on the Grand Canal looking like they’re straight out of a James Bond film. The gondolas are there. It’s the classic image. Take our picture, please!

Other ideas include: Bordeaux – 6hrs from St Pancras – noted for its wine and five-star-rated food and drink. Amsterdam – 4hrs from St Pancras – and Avignon – 6hrs from St Pancras.

Btw Chalkmarks recommends getting the boat – boarding the ferry to Spain, much better than the plane… it’s much more expensive and will take longer but, hey you’re on your hols. Olé!

CROWD CONTROL

What goes up a mountain in flip-flops and posts pictures on Insta-Tok? Social media riff-raff, that’s who. Yes, this is the war against tourists, which began in Tenerife last year with protests moving on the island of Mallorca, mainland Spain and Italy with locals fed up with drunken Britons. It was on MailOnline.

One of the big topics in 2025 the social impact of holidaymakers aka overtourism. How did we get here? There are multiple routes.

Tourism experts at the World Travel Market last November argued that once upon a time we mostly booked package holidays led by tour operators, but now many holidaymakers book their own flights and Airbnbs then guide themselves by following influencers on TikTok and Instagram and Googling the “ten best bars”

This results in directing 99 per cent of social media disciples to 1 per cent of a city. Also, there’s been a shift in attitude and behaviour: once an airline ticket has been booked, passengers demand service, and the more they pay, the more they expect. Plus a more recent phenomenon has emerged: when a tourist stays in an Airbnb they feel like a resident and “this is my place”. But it isn’t. It seems enjoying local hospitality has been replaced with a sense of entitlement.

Already, Prague is banning organised night-time pub crawls which are rowdy, and basically bringing the neighbourhood down. Deputy mayor Jiri Pospisil said he wanted a different class of visitor to the Czech capital, not boozers on stag and hen dos. Once signed off, pub crawls will be banned from 10pm to 6am. And police will be around to enforce the ban. It made the Guardian.

And to clamp down on numbers Venice introduced its €5 (£4.30) tourist tax for day-trippers last April. It was the first city in the world to charge an entrance fee. Locals said it made them feel they were living in a theme park. Authorities hoped the fee would help reduce tourist numbers on busy days but most admit €5 won’t put anyone off. It ended in July. We expect it will be back.

From last November the number of tourists allowed to visit Italy’s ancient city of Pompeii, buried under volcanic ash, has been capped to 20,000 a day.

Even the cost of free things is going up! The iconic Brighton Pier has started charging a £1 admission. First opened in 1899, it’s had a recent history of fire and neglect. With the promise of fun in its restaurants, bars and arcades the money will go to help pay for the pier’s upkeep and maintenance. The BBC has the story.

Fancy a quickie? Pubs are closing at an alarming rate as drinking habits shift, but we’re determined to save the great British boozer. Open City tours of historic London pubs, led by Sheldon K Goodman, take us from Blackfriar’s Victorian charm to Westminster’s lively streets, echoing stories of Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde. These venues, where alehouses transformed into inns, hold centuries of history, from Sir Christopher Wren’s workforce tokens to Charing Cross’s split Ship and Shovell. Follow us on our rescue mission to keep pubs alive. Hic!

Have you seen our pictures: Our fantastic travel photos, which capture some of our favourite destinations around the world, are now available for sale on Alamy. Woohoo!

BREXIT

From November 2025, Britons will have to pay €7 (£6) for a visa waiver to enter the EU. Known as ETIAS (European Travel Information and Authorisation System), the visa will last three years, allowing travel from Andorra to Vatican City and everywhere in between. It will be available to buy online in May with a phased six-month grace period before they become mandatory.

But what about the EU border checks – when will they come in? No one knows. After being warned several times last year the new rules between the UK and EU were imminent, they never came into force.

According to the Daily Mail, the Labour government was told the Entry-Exit System (EES) would cause queues at airports and ports, four times longer than they are now, as Britons would need their picture taken, give their fingerprints and answer a series of questions before entering any EU country.

Instead of 30 seconds, it could take a minimum of two minutes per person. Aviation bosses feared long queues in crowded arrivals halls which could even leave passengers stuck on planes unable to disembark – and that in turn would mean flights delayed or cancelled.

For years there has been much talk about the new EU border checks post-Brexit, including fingerprinting and biometric photos. Due to a lack of tech infrastructure, it’s been shelved. So, when might it happen? That’s not clear. So let’s forget about it for now.

SCAMS

Travellers are being warned to look out for scams across all social media. The BBC discovered that when an airline passenger sends a message for booking help they are increasingly being responded to by scammers using fake accounts.

They are often asked for a mobile phone number so they can be contacted directly but it’s a ruse. Don’t do it. Check the reply has come from the correct account. All major airlines have been targeted and they urged customers not to share any personal info on social media.

In case you don’t follow us on social media you really should. Here we are, here too and over here. Say hola muchacha on Bluesky!