Tourise Foreword
Travel and tourism has always evolved alongside the ways people connect with the world. Today, those connections are increasingly shaped through digital platforms and online communities that influence how travelers discover destinations, build trust, form perceptions, and make decisions long before a journey begins.
We are entering a new era of tourism in which attention, influence, and demand are shaped in real time through creators, communities, and shared experiences online. A single recommendation, cultural moment, or piece of content can now influence travel decisions at global scale. Discovery has become continuous, traveler expectations are evolving faster, and the distance between inspiration and booking is rapidly disappearing.
This report arrives at an important moment for the global tourism sector. Across industries, consumer behavior is being reshaped by platforms that influence how people consume information, validate choices, and engage with brands and experiences. In tourism, these shifts carry even greater significance because travel is inherently emotional, social, and experience-led. Destinations are now evaluated continuously through public conversation, creator perspectives, and shared experiences that shape global perception at unprecedented speed and scale.
His Excellency Ahmed Al Khateeb
Minister of Tourism and Chairman of TOURISE
As this report highlights, these shifts are transforming the competitive dynamics of tourism. Visibility, credibility, and cultural relevance are becoming critical drivers of long-term demand and destination competitiveness. At the same time, travelers are placing greater value on authenticity, trusted recommendations, and experiences that feel distinctive and personally meaningful.
This transformation also brings important responsibilities. As visibility accelerates and visitor flows shift more rapidly, tourism leaders must ensure growth remains balanced, sustainable, and aligned with the long-term interests of communities. Managing tourism in this environment requires thoughtful stewardship of infrastructure, culture, identity, and visitor experience, alongside responsible approaches to technology, trust, and emerging artificial intelligence applications.
The conversations convened through TOURISE continue to reinforce the importance of collaboration across tourism, technology, media, hospitality, investment, and public policy. The structural shifts reshaping travel behavior cannot be addressed by any one sector alone. The destinations that remain competitive will be those that adapt proactively, invest in long-term resilience, and strengthen the connections between tourism, culture, technology, and economic development.
The insights in this report challenge stakeholders across the tourism value chain to rethink how destinations create value, how experiences are designed, and how demand is shaped in a more interconnected and experience-driven global economy.
In effect, the future of tourism will not be defined solely by the number of visitors destinations attract, but by the trust destinations build, the cultural relevance they sustain, and the long-term value they create for travelers, communities, and economies alike. The destinations and businesses that succeed will be those that combine innovation with authenticity, embrace cultural distinctiveness, and recognize that in this new era of travel, visibility carries both opportunity and responsibility.
Setting the Scene
Travel has always been shaped by stories, but today, where these stories are encountered, how early they appear and how directly they influence demand has changed.
Across the industry, we are witnessing a steady shift in how people discover, evaluate, and commit to travel. For a growing share of travelers, the journey now begins long before a destination is searched or a plan is formed. It begins with exposure to experiences, perspectives, and moments encountered through video, creators, and culture in the feed. This first journey is increasingly virtual, and it is shaping the second one in the real world. Evidence from TikTok and IPSOS clearly points to this evolution. Today, 42% of travelers discover new destinations through digital platforms, and 37% finalize itineraries within those same environments. Inspiration, consideration, and decision are no longer experienced in isolation; they are increasingly compressed, overlapping, and influenced by what people see others doing in real time.
Shadi Kandil
General Manager, Global Business Solutions, Middle East, Turkey, Africa, Central and South Asia - TikTok
The feed has become a planning surface, a validation engine, and a booking trigger all at once. As a result, digital discovery is no longer just marketing input; it is actively shaping demand, distribution, and competitive advantage. In effect, it has rewired the economics of travel. It was in this context that CEOs from across the global travel and tourism ecosystem convened during TOURISE. The purpose was not to debate short-term trends, but to examine how this evolving discovery dynamic is affecting business models, destination strategy, and long-term growth. The discussion reflected shared recognition: when discovery happens publicly, continuously, and at scale, the implications extend well beyond communications.
Creators now play a central role in this environment, not only inspiring interest, but helping travelers validate choices, refine plans, and move with greater confidence from curiosity to commitment.
Communities organized around shared interests are increasingly shaping where people go, when they travel, and what they prioritize once they arrive. In this landscape, visibility carries responsibility, and authenticity underpins long-term relevance. This paper brings together insights from that conversation to help leaders respond to this new reality. It is intended to support a shift beyond promotion and toward active stewardship of demand, shaping not just where people go, but how, when, and why they arrive.
As the first journey increasingly happens online, the leaders who will define the next era of travel are those who learn to design for it thoughtfully, responsibly, and with a clear view of the long-term value they are building.
(Source: The Future of Travel Decision-making, IPSOS, 2025)
The Big Picture
As the global travel and tourism economy enters a new era shaped by the rise of digital discovery, twelve industry CEOs convened at an exclusive roundtable during TOURISE to debate the strategic future of the sector. The conversation went beyond immediate trends to interrogate the fundamental mechanics of how travel is now consumed, funded, and sustained.
Every micro-moment becomes part of a destination’s global reputation. Because this public visibility provides immediate social proof, the path to booking has changed drastically into a continuous flow. With real-time validation available in the feed, the distinction between 'dreaming' and 'booking' has collapsed, with 37% of travelers now finalizing itineraries directly on digital platforms. Inspiration and transaction are no longer separate stages, but simultaneous events.
In this high-speed environment, three critical levers were identified for survival:
Today, for nearly half of all travelers, the journey begins not with a search bar, but with a digital feed that merges inspiration, advice, cultural trends, and planning tools with a single click. Because of this shift, the leaders agreed that the era of postcard marketing is over. Travelers are no longer captivated by polished, static images; they demand the authentic, the undiscovered, and the visceral reality of how a place feels.
This shift is driven by the fact that travel is one of the few industries where everything happens publicly. The advertising is public, the experience is public, and the feedback loop is public.
'Local' nuance is critical
Conformity is no longer appreciated. A decade ago, a traveler visited a chain hotel in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) expecting the same experience they would get in Paris. Today, that exact same experience gets a poor rating. Travelers demand to see the local interpretation of global brands manifest through every interaction. In this era, authenticity and owning your identity really matter. Travelers can forgive imperfection, but they don’t forgive inconsistency.
Communities are the new demand engine
Demographics no longer explain modern travel behavior; interestsdo. By leaning into interest-based communities, destinations can connect in ways that traditional segmentation simply cannot.
Reinvention
is non-negotiable
Sustained success is no longer about the first visit; it is about the second. Destinations must evolve continuously and diversify experiences so that return visits offer new value. This paper synthesizes the key insights and urgent directives that emerged from that high-level debate, equipping executives with strategies to move from promoting places to steering journeys.
