Amadeus has released its Travel Trends for 2025, giving a glimpse into the future of global travel.
Partnering with travel trends forecasting agency Globetrender, the Amadeus 2025 Travel Trends report highlights five key trends promising to reshape the travel landscape in the coming year:
- New Heydays: Change-weary travelers are longing for simpler, happier vacations driven by past experiences and a phenomenon known as “rosy retrospection.”
- Personalized Flying: Advances in AI, 5G mobile connectivity, and VR will converge to create highly personalized, connected, and immersive experiences for air passengers.
- Trailblazer Hotels: Hotels are increasingly becoming destinations in their own right, as travelers plan trips around iconic, “calling card” properties with unique identities.
- Asia Uplift: Asia is gearing up for a travel renewal, aiming to reclaim its position as a key player in the global tourism industry.
- Connections IRL: As digital dating burnout rises, travel will become a new avenue for real-world relationships, from holiday romances to lasting friendships.
Asia’s re-emergence in global tourism
In 2025, Asia is set to reclaim its position as a premier travel destination. The Asia Uplift trend reflects increased inbound and outbound tourism, driven by relaxed travel restrictions, expanded flight routes, and luxury developments.
Reopening of borders and visas
Countries across Asia are extending visa‑free travel and simplifying entry restrictions, to attract international tourists and digital nomads. The increased accessibility is a major driver to the Asia Uplift and the region’s renewed appeal as a leading travel destination.
In 2025, inbound and outbound travel to and from Asia (and most significantly, China) is finally expected to reach pre-2019 levels and will fully open this market to the world. Given that China was, in 2019, the world’s most valuable source market for tourism globally – its comeback has been long-awaited (domestic travel has been booming in 2024 but outbound is still sluggish).
Amadeus total traffic figures show that outbound travel from Chengdu in China increased by 66% to 35.2M passengers between 2016 and 2023. Similarly, outbound traffic from Guangzhou increased by 20%. During the same period, outbound traffic from Delhi in India, another high growth country, increased 31% to more than 30 million.
To entice foreign visitors, China has extended visa-free inbound travel until the end of 2025 for numerous countries and new luxury hotels will open.
According to American credit rating agency Fitch Ratings, Asia tourism will likely return to pre-Covid levels during the first half of 2025 thanks in part to weaker currencies that make it more affordable for overseas visitors.
Thailand is likely to be the most talked-about tourism destination in 2025, due to season three of popular TV drama The White Lotus being set there, as well as numerous luxury hotel openings. Tourism Authority of Thailand forecasts that 40 million international visitors are expected in 2025. More persuasive still will be its new digital nomad visa and expanded visa- free entry for 93 countries.
The airing of season two of South Korean TV series Squid Game on Boxing Day is expected to further boost interest in travel to South Korea; while 2024 show Shōgun has inspired historical tours of Japan (season two and three have also been commissioned). Cementing interest in Japan will be Expo 2025, taking place in Osaka.
Growth of air travel in Asia
Looking further into the future, over the next 15 years, the Asia-Pacific region will be responsible for 50% of global air passenger growth according to IATA, driven by a growing middle-income class population, with eight in 10 households entering into middle class worldwide in the next decade.
The Asia-Pacific region has seen a number of new long-haul additions both into and out of the region in 2024. Air Canada introduced nonstop flights between Vancouver and Singapore. Korean Air added a fourth daily service between Seoul Incheon and Manila.
China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines also launched their first regular non-stop services to Saudi Arabia. Garuda Indonesia opened daily flights between Jakarta and Doha, Qatar. Also in Dec 2024, Shanghai Airlines will launch two new international flights from Changchun, capital of Northeast China’s Jilin province, to Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok via Shanghai.
Budget airlines have also been busy launching new flights. AirAsia launched direct flights from Kuala Lumpur to Nairobi, Kenya, a first from an Southeast Asian budget carrier to East Africa. In Dec 2024, Thai AirAsia X resumed its direct flight services to and from Sydney.
Jetstar Asia resumed the direct flight route between Singapore and Medan, Indonesia. HK Express Airways also relaunched its Hong Kong-Hiroshima service. Peach Aviation became the only Japanese airline to offer services from Singapore to Osaka. Vietjet Thailand has introduced its inaugural Mumbai-Bangkok service.
New routes in 2025
Etihad Airways will be launching new flights linking Abu Dhabi to Asia including Taiwan, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Indonesia in 2025. From March 2025, Singapore Airlines will have a daily service to Gatwick, up from the current five-times weekly services. Together with its four-times daily flights to Heathrow, this will give the airline five daily services to London. Services to Rome will increase to five times a week.
United has bolstered its intra-Asia network, and launched service between Tokyo Narita and Cebu in the Philippines. Joining the new route to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia next summer, the airline also plans to add year-round flights from Tokyo to Kaohsiung, Taiwan. In addition, the airline plans to fly between Narita and Koror, Palau.
Hong Kong Airlines will be resuming direct flights to Vancouver, Canada from Jan 2025. Malaysia Airlines will resume direct flights between Kuala Lumpur and Paris, starting March, 2025. Cathay Pacific announced that flights between Hong Kong and Munich will be introduced from mid-June 2025. In 2025, AirAsia will increase its international network by eight destinations, growing from 98 to 106.
Finnair will increase service to Osaka Kansai will increase to six weekly flights from March 30, 2025, and then to daily flights from May 2, 2025, coinciding with the World Expo 2025. Shanghai Pudong will see an increase to four weekly flights while Tokyo Narita will have daily service from March 2025.
