I’ve had a lot of the same conversation lately. Someone messages me, usually a little frazzled, saying something like “I just want someone to figure this out for me.” They’ve had eleven tabs open. They’ve read three “best of” lists that all contradict each other. And somewhere in there, they’ve lost the plot on why they even wanted to travel in the first place.
So let’s talk about what’s actually changing in how people plan trips — because it’s not what most of the glossy travel content out there is telling you
Personalization is going deeper than “customized itinerary”
Everyone says “personalized” these days, so it barely means anything on its own anymore. What I think is actually new is how far that personalization is going — some clients want their trip shaped around genuinely unconventional inputs. I’ve started offering astrocartography-guided destination suggestions for clients who know how they want to feel but have no idea where to start geographically — it’s not for everyone, but for the right person, it’s a surprisingly useful starting point rather than staring at a map feeling stuck.
The “someone else figure it out” trip is back
There was a stretch where everyone wanted to DIY everything — build their own itinerary, book every piece separately, feel like a travel expert by the time they landed. That’s cooled off. Between rising flight complexity, fluctuating exchange rates, and just general life being busy, more people are handing the logistics to someone who does this for a living and keeping their own energy for the actual trip.
This is the part of the shift I feel the most personally, since it’s the whole reason I do this work. People don’t want less control over their trip — they want less labour. There’s a difference.
What this means if you’re planning your next trip
If I had to boil it down: figure out how you want to feel before you figure out where you want to go, book earlier than feels necessary, don’t be afraid of shoulder season, and don’t be shy about handing off the parts of planning you don’t enjoy. That’s really it. The trends aren’t complicated — they’re just a shift toward travel that actually fits the person taking it, instead of the person doing what everyone else is doing.
If you’re staring down a trip you can’t quite picture yet, that’s usually where I come in.