From hot destinations and cruises, package holidays to digital nomadism, tourism trends rise and fall every few years. Currently, two big trends have been surging in how people holiday: gig-tripping and run-cations.
Gig-tripping involves planning travel around a concert, to a different city or even to a different country. While gig-tripping is not a new phenomenon, and groupies have followed bands on tour since the 1960s, the trend to travel for a certain concert or festival has been gaining traction.
In 2024, Skyscanner released a report on the year’s travel trends. This highlighted that around a third of UK fans were willing to travel for their favourite artists. Others surveyed also highlighted the potential cost-saving benefits, as tickets outside of the US and UK tend to be cheaper.
The rise of gig-tripping has been particularly well documented around Taylor Swift’s recent Eras tour. As tickets in the US rose in cost and declined in availability, many fans decided to travel primarily to cities across Europe for increased chances of attending.
Gig-tripping is especially evident in the US, where Skyscanner found that around 44% of people were willing to travel on short-haul flights.
Alongside the rise in gig-tripping is another steadily growing sub-section of travel, set to be one of 2025 and 2026’s key trends: race-cations. Here, tourism is seeing a boost as runners seek to explore the world through races and running events.
Strava reported a 9% increase in 2024 of people completing marathons and ultra-marathons. As more people are taking up extreme running, athletes are looking for the next event away from their home turf. Marathons are growing in popularity, with New York and London swapping the title of world’s largest, with well over 55,000 people completing each year. The ballot for the London Marathon in 2025 saw 840,000 people enter for a place, with a 43% increase in international applications.
Some cities are beginning to capitalise on the increase in running tourism. Valencia has branded itself as the “city of running”, informing visitors of the best running routes around the city and its hotels offering runner-friendly services.
As new event-based travel plans grow in popularity, cities will feel the benefit. A survey of runners revealed that 60% tend to stay around three to five nights around a race, boosting the local economy with the use of hotels and restaurants, and with visits to local sites.
For gig-tripping, large-scale concert tours have also shown marked benefits to the local area. Sam Fender’s recent hometown concerts at St James Park in Newcastle boosted the local economy by a reported £16.5 million ($21.9 million). The three sold-out gigs saw 150,000 fans travel to North Shields, bringing extra revenue to bars and hotels in the area.
