What you need to know
Luxury holidaymakers’ habits have become much more diverse, with more of this group looking beyond beach holidays. The types of luxury holiday to increase in popularity include safari/wildlife-watching holidays, guided touring holidays, physical activity/sporting holidays, villa/cottage holidays and sea/river cruises.
Comfort remains a key element of luxury holidays, particularly in the higher end of the market. However, exclusivity and unique experiences have become much more important in luxury travel over time. This shift is being fuelled by consumers’ interest in sharing stories via social media and their desire to escape the crowds that descend on touristy destinations.
Luxury travellers are very much open to minimising their impact on the environment whilst travelling. In terms of taking practical measures to positively contribute to the environment/destination, they are most interested in supporting the local economy and staying in eco-friendly accommodation.
Products covered in this Report
There is no industry-wide agreement on the definition of the luxury holidaymaker. Mintel has therefore approached the luxury travel segment from a number of different angles and created three luxury segments, based on the findings of our exclusive consumer research:
Big-ticket spenders – these are consumers who have spent either:
£1,000+ per head for a break of 1-6 nights or
£1,500+ per head for a holiday of 7-13 nights or
£3,000+ per head for 14+ nights in the past five years.
This group accounts for an estimated 25% of all UK holidaymakers.
Five-star big-ticket spenders – these are:
Big-ticket spenders (as defined above)
who have also stayed in five-star or above accommodation in the past five years, since this is likely to be seen by most specialist brands as a core element of luxury travel.
This group represents an estimated 14% of all UK holidaymakers.
All luxury travellers – these are consumers who either:
fall into the above spending groups
or who have stayed in five-star or above accommodation
or spent £250+ per hotel night in the past five years
51% of all UK holidaymakers have fallen into the ‘luxury travellers’ category at some point in the five years to 2019.
