With increasing disposable incomes and a flourishing economy, holidaying remained a popular trend driving travel. Indian travelers continued to spend lavishly on travel and were keen to explore newer destinations. Though airlines fares may not be as attractive as they used to be, travel and tourism industry continues to flourish.

According Skift.com for the first time since the European Renaissance, the locus of travel is moving eastward, and 2013 will continue that inexorable journey. Both consumer and business travel trends are now being defined and tested out in regions other than U.S. and Europe. According to the site, user experience and its intersection with design is the lens, that travel will increasingly be defined by, and regions like Middle East and South East Asia are at the forefront of those trends.

The report, however, states that one area where U.S. is still defining trends is technology innovation, especially in mobile. Companies like Airbnb and HotelTonight are redefining the very definition of the hotel and lodging sectors, while larger digital giants like Google, Apple and Nokia have hit reset on the transportation and local transit sectors with their mapping and local information wars.

There is plenty of innovations happening within the country. Travel e-commerce sites rule the roost and many innovative startups have sprung up in the sector. For franchisers and franchisees it is imperative that they understand the changes happening in the sector, what’s hot and the trends which will define the year.

A record 1 billion tourists crossed international borders in 2012, and Chinese travelers are becoming a bigger and bigger part of it. Outbound tourists rose from 16.6 million in 2002 to 70.3 million in 2011, and are expected to rise to 82 million this year, up 17 percent. Those numbers are expected to rise to a whopping 200 million by 2020, and the world needs to get ready to absorb that many extra tourists. This is especially true for tourists’ spending money.
UNWTO figures show that year on year, Chinese tourists spent 30 percent more when travelling abroad than previous year.

From hotels, airports, malls and retailers hiring Mandarin speaking concierge services, to countries easing visa norms and doing joint marketing agreements with China, everyone wants the hordes of Chinese travelers spending money, especially the recession and debt crisis beset European and North American countries: U.S., UK and Australia are banking on Chinese visitors to shore up their sputtering economies. Neighboring destinations like Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapore, already very popular with Chinese, are re-architecting their tourism policies wholesale to accommodate these big numbers. Even countries like Gambia, Kazakhstan and Pakistan, not on any mainstream tourism map, are stepping up their marketing efforts to lure the mainland travelers. If you’re in travel anywhere in the world and don’t have an evolved and nuanced China strategy, you are not a serious player in 2013. Indian travel companies, both franchisers and franchisees would do well to cater to this lucrative segment of tourists and look to offer specialized services.

Ancillary fees are the new normal

According to Skift the travel industry has been completely upended by the unbundling of fees, with airlines leading the charge. Airlines have gone far beyond checked bag fees and are now dreaming up new paid services, including bag delivery and pre-ordered gourmet meals on board. As airlines are expected to pocket 36 billion dollar in fees in 2012, other travel sectors are quickly getting into the act, too. Hotels are building new spas to build on these ancillary services and fees, and turning once-included services into a la carte ones in order to charge extra for additional housekeeping services, bathroom amenities, or even television.

In India low cost airlines like Indigo and Spicejet have started charging Rs. 50 for each printout of the ticket taken by a traveler at the airport offices. Similarly Indigo levies a Rs. 200 for express checkin, which helps travelers beat the long queues for check in.

Expect more demands from consumers for transparency with all the new fees being added on, as well as a host of startups and solutions to manage and navigate around these fees.

Last minute hotel booking

HotelTonight is a very well-funded app built to do one thing and one thing only: Book last-minute, same-day hotels in the city you are in. Every day at noon local time the app gives you deeply discounted rates at five hotels available in your chosen city. The innovation is not just on the simple curation concept, but also on UI and design: gorgeous dark tones and a simple one click to book using your stored your credit card info. The app fills a real need in the market, especially for business travelers, and no wonder it is growing like a weed. Expect more such curated single-function startups to crop up. In reaction to HotelTonight, Priceline already launched Tonight-Only hotel deals, and expect further challenges from other established players.

Within India sites like Stayzilla.com is carving its own market. Stayzilla is an online hotel booking website focused on bringing affordable hotels all over India online. Currently one can book from an inventory of over 5000 hotels in 650 Indian cities. Whether you are looking for affordable stay in Kashmir/Tawang/ Kanyakumari, Stayzilla has it all.

Rise of price transparency

Tingo, part of the giant TripAdvisor family, is intent on bringing transparency to hotel travel pricing. With Tingo, consumers book a hotel room at the lowest available refundable rate and the service automatically re-books the reservation in the future if the rate drops. No extra work is involved from the user’s side, and they get notified about the new lower price until 24 or 48 hours before check-in, when the final price is set. Long term, the macro trends are clear: price transparency will become norm, and expect it to come to airlines and other parts of travel ecosystem as well. While it’s a real benefit to travelers, hotels can use the fluctuation in their prices to upsell consumers on goods like a room upgrade, a drink at the bar, or spa services.

Food Tourism

Food tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors for the discerning traveler, and now Whole Foods has launched a new venture to capitalize on the trend. Called Whole Journeys, it offers worldwide tours focused on the production and consumption of food. It’s a clever brand extension for Whole Foods: The company already has a massive following of dedicated, wealthy, and discerning consumers who are likely to salivate at the news and become the venture’s first customers. Expect more such efforts from larger consumer brands as they try to build on their “authentic” cred in various sectors, especially retail.

From the crowded lanes of old Delhi to the spicy trails of South India, the diversity of Indian food is unmatched and unparalleled. In 2013 tours and travel companies would benefit significantly from selling India as a destination to explore “food”.

Airports as destinations

As the airline experience continues to deteriorate and fragment—at least in the Western world—airports are seeing a buzz of activity and are reinventing themselves around user experience and design. The new normal as exemplified by Incheon International Airport in Seoul, Madrid’s Barajas Airport, or Singapore’s Changi Airport, are centered around innovations like airy, light-filled primary spaces, less-intimidating security and baggage claim areas, simple signage, solutions to satiate our need to be connected (free Wi-Fi!), and more shopping and dining options near gates. The more successful ones have become places where people want to spend time and have experiences and not just pass through. Whether it is Chicago’s O’Hare newly launched farmer’s market inside the terminal, or Munich’s onsite brewery, the airports are becoming more inspirational, aspirational, and nurturing. Imagine that.

India has also seen massive modernization of its airport infrastructure. New Delhi’s T3 is one of the finest and the largest in the region is already being rated as one of the best airports. A new airport is coming up in Mumbai while the ones in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kolkata are up and running.

Destination branding through movies

Starring in a film has become a sure fire way to boost tourism for a destination. Tourism in New Zealand boomed following the Lord of Rings trilogy and the country’s tourism board has every intention of that happening again with the release of The Hobbit. A huge marketing campaign aimed to make the country synonymous with “middle-earth” included aircraft livery and in-flight videos. Visit Britain similarly integrated tourism marketing efforts with the Bond film Skyfall just as the U.S. state of Virginia began touting itself as the site of Lincoln’s filming and North Carolina turned Hunger Games into an advertisement for its outdoors. Now destination marketing organizations are realizing the trend and looking to convert international attention a destination can draw from a movie into travel bookings. Expect to see the trend pick up in 2013 with more planned campaigns and bids to become the venue—beyond tax break incentives—for highly anticipated movies.

For decades Bollywood has been romancing Europe, immortalized by Yash Chopra and his band of films. Of late films like Ek Tha Tiger has popularized Cuba while Agent Vinod has showcased Morocco. Both the countries have now started figuring in the places of interest for Indian tourist.

Affordable design at hotels

A new breed of hotels popped up in Europe this year and is slowly making its way around the world. These so-called budget or smart luxury hotels feature clean, bright designs and rooms that cost less than the high-end design hotels that emerged in the late 1990s and spread through the early 2000s. Designed with young, tech-savvy travelers in mind the concept includes large community spaces, compact rooms, free Wi-Fi, and lots of outlets. The most well-known is CitizenM, which cuts its costs by designing and assembling identical rooms that are then stacked into a finished product. A similar hotel The Superbude 2 in Hamburg, Germany took the award for European Hotel Design Of The Year.

As established hotel brands look to renovate and redesign their older properties, they’ll likely pull components from these smartly designed, fledgling brands. .

Within India hotels like Ginger, Ibis, Lemon Tree and others have been offering affordable hotels. Ginger group of hotels, a wholly owned subsidiary of Indian Hotels Co Ltd. which also owns the Taj group of hotels, has had its business model developed with guidance from Prahlad C K, the Indian born, business guru and author of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

Blurring of business & Leisure

The boundary between business and leisure traveler is blurring as “rogue” business travelers find their way outside the corporate walls. The arrival of online travel more than a decade ago and the mobile revolution today led to what the corporate travel types call “leakage.” Business travelers have rebelled against their stodgy corporate booking tools and want to access the deals and tools that are readily available to them when they travel for leisure.

Millennials raised on intuitive, leisure-oriented travel experiences have come to expect more from corporate travel. With a majority of business travelers working for companies that don’t have managed travel programs, they can take advantage of deals on everything from Airbnb to HotelTonight, as well as low cost carriers. Travel and expense firm Concur is trying to help companies handle their booking rebels with an Open Booking solution that enables employees to make their travel plans directly on these consumer sites. Expect better user experience, design and flexibility for business travelers going ahead.

Gulf as next global aviation hub

The spectacular rise of the triumvirate of Emirates, Etihad and Qatar airlines mirrors the geopolitical rise of these tiny state actors onto the world stage, riding on a wave of sovereign oil wealth. All the airlines’ activity also means huge airport hubs, and new ones being built almost overnight. The airports Emirates and Etihad call home are undergoing significant expansions, while Qatar Airways is preparing to move to a brand-new airport any day now.

Add to that, 2012 saw these airlines acquiring strategic stakes in low-cost carriers and national carriers around the world and entering into codeshares and airline alliances. Qatar’s entry into the oneworld alliance and Emirates’ deal with Qantas are typical of their movements and demonstrate that these airlines are not rogue actors on the scene but the new establishment, as the center of gravity of long-haul aviation settles in the Gulf region.

At the same time, Europe’s ongoing debt crisis has left it powerless to take the bold actions necessary to prevent it from slipping in the great aviation race. Expect even more frenzied activity in 2013 as the three Gulf carriers look to expand into North America and Africa, both directly and indirectly through partnerships.

Rise of Myanmar

The opening-up and the rise of Myanmar over the last year has been breathtaking in scope, and its travel sector is the one to watch for the next year. The country has always had a small-but-well-worn backpacker trail and tours available to wealthy visitors, but packaged travel arrived in earnest for the first time in 2012, lured by the marketing of Burmese exotica.

It is now on every top travel destination list for 2013. Yangon, the former capital and main gateway, is the fastest growing hotel market in the world, and the current hotel capacity was sold out for most of 2012. It is the hottest new airline route on the circuit, with local and global Asian airlines starting new flights to it. The total tourist count will cross 1 million mark in 2012, its highest ever. On the travel infrastructure side, it will continue to struggle with demand, which also means tons of new opportunities for investors in all sectors of travel.