American Express Travel’s 2025 Global Travel Trends Report points to a traveler who is both more intentional and more practical. Guests still want memorable trips, but they’re also thinking harder about how they plan them, how they pay for them, who comes along, and what they bring home. Experiences remain a major booking driver, but the decision-making process is becoming more layered. For hotels, that creates a useful shift. The opportunity isn’t simply to sell a room. It’s to understand the behaviors surrounding the stay and build offers, experiences, technology, and messaging around them.

A few numbers set the tone:

77% of global respondents plan to take the same number or more international trips than last year.
60% plan to book travel around entertainment events or take at least one trip for a sporting event in 2025.
70% of Millennials and Gen Z surveyed like trips where the journey is as important as the destination.
75% of Millennials and Gen Z surveyed say booking travel with credit card points feels like a reward.
_{Credit: American Express Travel}

The headline is fairly clear: demand is still there. What’s changing is what travelers consider valuable.

Travel Is Becoming More Intentional

The 2025 report describes travelers as approaching trips with a combination of “passion and practicality.” That balance runs through nearly every trend in the report. Guests want authentic purchases instead of generic souvenirs. Families are traveling across generations. Loyalty points are becoming part of destination selection. Technology is increasingly shaping everything from trip inspiration to budgeting and translation. For hotels, this means the winning strategy is less about adding more and more features and more about making the existing experience feel relevant, useful, and connected to why the guest is traveling in the first place.

01 / Memorable Mementos

The Souvenir Shop Is Getting an Upgrade

Travelers are becoming more intentional about what they bring home.

According to the report, 82% of Millennials and Gen Z surveyed look for one-of-a-kind goods that remind them of their trip, compared with 68% of Gen X and Baby Boomers. More than half of Millennials and Gen Z surveyed also intentionally travel to destinations to find high-quality goods that are handmade or authentic to the destination. The opportunity for hotels goes well beyond a shelf of branded mugs near the front desk. Properties can become curators of the destination by connecting guests with local makers, designers, galleries, beauty brands, food producers, and specialty retailers. This is especially relevant because 73% of global respondents say supporting local small businesses is important when visiting a new destination, while 67% typically rely on local recommendations, guides, or social media to find them. Hotels already sit at the intersection of those two behaviors.

What Hotels Can Do

Build a curated local retail program rather than a traditional gift shop. Feature products with a story: locally produced ceramics, artwork, fragrances, textiles, food products, or limited-edition hotel collaborations. Go one step further and connect the retail experience to the stay itself. A locally made candle used in guestrooms could also be available for purchase. A ceramic cup from breakfast service could become a keepsake. A signature amenity could be developed with a neighborhood maker and sold exclusively through the hotel. The point isn’t merchandise for merchandise’s sake. It’s giving guests something tangible that extends the memory of the stay. And, conveniently, that memory can also have a margin attached to it.

02 / Fam Adventures

Family Travel Is Getting Bigger, Literally

Multi-generational travel is becoming increasingly important, particularly among Millennials and Gen Z parents. The report found that 58% of Millennials and Gen Z parents surveyed plan to bring extended family on vacation in 2025, compared with 31% of Gen X and Baby Boomer parents.

The motivation is also worth noting: 89% cited quality time as the reason for bringing extended family, compared with just 24% who cited help with childcare. This isn’t simply a larger room-night opportunity. It changes how hotels should think about room configurations, booking paths, amenities, packages, and programming. Another important shift: children increasingly influence trip planning. 68% of Millennials and Gen Z parents surveyed say their children help inform aspects of the trip, while 81% of global respondents prefer destinations with activities for all ages.

What Hotels Can Do

Hotels should make it easier for families to understand how different room types work together. Connecting-room options, adjoining rooms, suites, sofa-bed configurations, and multi-room booking paths should be clearly explained online. If guests have to open three tabs and perform geometry to figure out whether Grandma can stay next door, the booking experience is doing too much. Packages can also be built around shared experiences rather than simply adding a breakfast credit.

Think family cooking classes, neighborhood scavenger hunts, private tours, movie nights, or partnerships with local attractions that work across age groups. There is also an off-season opportunity. The report found that 72% of Millennials and Gen Z parents surveyed are willing to take their children out of school to travel during the off-season. That gives hotels another segment to target during traditionally softer periods, particularly with value-added packages designed specifically around family flexibility.

03 / Benefit Aficionados

Points Aren’t Just Paying for Trips. They’re Influencing Them.

Travelers are becoming increasingly sophisticated about loyalty programs, credit card rewards, and travel benefits. Two-thirds of global respondents say combining credit card rewards with other loyalty perks provides the best value for international travel, while 58% are likely to stack benefits from multiple loyalty programs to access upgrades they might not otherwise purchase. The behavior is even more pronounced among younger travelers. 61% of Millennials and Gen Z surveyed use their credit cards to maximize travel rewards, compared with 36% of Gen X and Baby Boomers.

And these benefits are increasingly influencing where travelers go:

50% of global respondents plan to use credit card or travel points on trips in 2025.
45% choose destinations based on where they can best use credit card points.
43% plan to book a vacation once they reach a specific points threshold.
_{Credit: American Express Travel}

What Hotels Can Do

This trend makes partnerships more valuable. Independent hotels may not operate enormous loyalty ecosystems, but they can participate in the broader rewards economy through credit card programs, consortia, preferred partner networks, airline partnerships, and curated benefits. The strategic question becomes:

What can the hotel offer that feels more valuable than another discount?

That might mean room upgrades, breakfast, resort credits, late checkout, welcome amenities, transportation, or exclusive experiences. Hotels should also make those benefits extremely visible during the booking process. A rate that includes $100 in property credit may be objectively stronger than a slightly cheaper room-only rate, but if the guest has to decode the fine print to understand that, the value disappears somewhere between the rate grid and checkout. Benefit design matters. Benefit communication matters just as much.

04 / Tap In, Take Off

Travel Planning Is Becoming a Technology Stack

Technology is playing a larger role across the entire travel journey. The report found that 83% of Millennials and Gen Z surveyed find at least one Gen AI capability useful for booking travel, compared with 64% of Gen X and Baby Boomers.

Among younger travelers, the most useful AI applications include:

Activity recommendations: 40%

Budgeting and expense management: 36%

Translation assistance: 33%

Personalized trip recommendations: 33%

That gives hotels an important clue about where digital experience is heading. Guests increasingly expect technology to reduce friction and help them make decisions.

What Hotels Can Do

Hotel websites should become more useful, not simply prettier.

Content should answer the questions travelers are already asking AI tools and travel apps: what neighborhood should I stay in, what can I do nearby, what makes this room different, what works for families, what’s worth booking in advance, and what does this stay actually include?

Structured, specific hotel content also becomes increasingly important as AI-driven travel discovery grows.

Hotels should make room descriptions, amenities, policies, destination content, packages, FAQs, and local recommendations easy for both guests and machines to understand.

There’s another useful insight buried in the report: 39% of Millennials and Gen Z surveyed typically search for the best travel deals on a smartphone or tablet and then use a desktop computer to book.

That means the customer journey doesn’t always happen on one screen.

Campaign attribution, saved itineraries, retargeting, email capture, and consistent messaging across devices matter more when discovery and conversion happen in different places.

Mobile-first doesn’t mean mobile-only.

The Bigger Signal: Experience Still Wins

One of the strongest continuities between the 2024 and 2025 reports is the importance of experience. Your 2024 article focused heavily on travelers prioritizing major trips, solo travel, and sports-driven experiences. The 2025 report expands that idea. The traveler is still experience-driven, but now the surrounding behaviors are becoming more sophisticated: they’re curating what they buy, bringing more people with them, optimizing benefits, and using technology to improve the journey. For hotels, the opportunity is to think beyond the room night.

Four Ideas Hotels Can Steal Right Now

1. The Local Edit

Create a rotating collection of products from local makers, artists, food producers, and designers. Give every item context: who made it, where it came from, and why it belongs in the destination. Better still, incorporate some of those products into the guest experience first, then give guests the opportunity to take them home.

2. The Whole Crew Package

Design a multi-generational stay package around flexibility rather than discounts. Include connected room options, flexible arrival times, breakfast, family-friendly activities, and a concierge-planned experience that works across different age groups. Make the booking experience equally flexible.

3. The Benefits Stack

Build an offer around cumulative value. Instead of simply reducing rate, package together room upgrades, property credits, breakfast, late checkout, local experiences, and partner benefits. Then make the total value unmistakable during booking. The guest shouldn’t need an actuarial degree to understand why the offer is better.

4. The Digital Concierge Before Arrival

Use pre-arrival communication to help guests build their stay before they arrive. Recommend restaurants, activities, local shops, events, transportation, and bookable hotel experiences based on trip purpose or guest profile. Done well, this improves the guest experience while creating additional opportunities for ancillary revenue before check-in.

What Revenue and Marketing Teams Should Watch

These trends become useful only when hotels measure what happens after they act on them. Track performance beyond occupancy and ADR.

Look at:

• Package conversion and incremental spend
• Ancillary revenue per occupied room
• Multi-room and family booking patterns
• Average length of stay
• Upgrade conversion
• Local experience participation
• Direct-booking benefit utilization
• Mobile versus desktop booking behavior
• Pre-arrival engagement and upsell conversion

The goal isn’t to chase every travel trend. It’s to identify the ones that intersect with your hotel’s positioning, guest mix, market, and commercial strategy, then build something worth measuring.

Final Thoughts

• The 2025 traveler isn’t becoming harder to understand. They’re becoming more intentional.
• They want experiences with meaning, purchases with a story, trips that bring people together, benefits that stretch their spending, and technology that makes the whole process easier.

For independent hotels, that’s good news.

• You don’t need the largest loyalty program or the biggest marketing budget to compete.
• You need a clearer understanding of what your guests value and the ability to turn that insight into a better experience faster than everyone else.
• That’s one area where independence remains a particularly useful feature.

American Express Travel, 2025 Global Travel Trends Report
The survey was conducted by Morning Consult from January 8–13, 2025 among more than 8,000 adults across the U.S., Australia, Canada, U.K., Japan, Mexico, and India who met specified income and travel criteria. The report states a margin of error of approximately ±2–3 percentage points.

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