'Conscious' Travel Emerging as Yet Another Hot Luxury Trend

For at least the past year, the travel industry, and especially the luxury sector, has latched onto the idea of "transformative travel" as the new "experiential travel." First coined in 2016 by the founders of an adventure travel company, Jake Haupert and Michael Bennet, who both lead the Transformational Travel Council, the term is meant to describe any travel experience that empowers people to make meaningful or lasting changes in their lives. And while this concept originated in adventure travel, it soon became associated with luxury travel. Why? Because there's no greater luxury today than personal fulfillment, as Skift's 2018 Travel Megatrend of the same name pointed out. During the most recent International Luxury Travel Market conference in Cannes in December, however, Skift spoke to a number of luxury travel executives who said they'd seen slight shifts in how luxury travelers perceive transformational travel. "Conscious travel, I believe, is taking the idea of transformative travel to a new level," Lindsey Ueberroth, CEO of Preferred Hotels & Resorts, told Skift. "It's about human rights and sustaining communities, and not just about sustainability." With conscious, or responsible travel, travelers are