Travel’s most annoying trends, from ‘microcations’ to ‘forest bathing’

Holiday providers are no strangers to marketing gimmicks, but things have got truly out of hand in recent years

“So, Joseph, you didn’t reserve anywhere?”
“Mary, I’m sorry, things have been crazy down at the carpenters recently.”
“And now there’s no room at the inn, and you’re suggesting we sleep in a stable?”
“…”
“Joseph?”
“No… I’m suggesting… we… babymoon! In this pop-up glampsite! On a haycation!”
Making stupid ideas sound almost (but not actually) fun has been part of the travel industry since that first ever lesson in how early you need to book for the Christmas holidays. (In fact, the oldest documented use of that horrid word “staycation” was in an advert for beer, on the pages of the Cincinnati Enquirer – back in 1944.)
It seems, like everything else, to have become worse recently though, as if the marketing men have taken over the asylum, or an intern has been left in charge of every company’s Instagram account like The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Or maybe they’ve just chucked a load of nonsensical buzzwords into ChatGPT and asked it to come up with “ridiculous holiday trends that no real person would ever take seriously”.
Don’t believe us? Try these – every one of them a genuine “idea” the travel industry has tried to foist on us…
OK, so we could probably forgive this one – it does, unlike most of the list here, describe an actual thing that actual people might actually want to do – if it would just please, for God’s sake, stop spawning new bastard progeny. Over the years, we’ve seen travel companies offer daycations, gourmetcations, praycations, chezcations, railwaycations, reggaecations, baycations and even gaycations.
Wait, what, now they’re doing ones that don’t even rhyme? Afraid so – see “coolcation” (going somewhere other than the Med in summer because it’s too hot there now), “sleepcation” (going somewhere specifically to catch up on kip), and, indeed, “microcation” (going on a trip so short it doesn’t even count as a mini-break).
If they’d actually put a bath in, we’d be interested. As it is, they’re just trying to sell us a walk in the woods. Well no thank you, we tried that once and it was very muddy.
“Babymoon”: taking a last holiday before the birth of your child. “Buddymoon”: taking a holiday somewhere beautiful with pals, because why should couples have all the fun. “Furbabymoon”: taking… the mick. Dogs do not need a special holiday just because their “parents” (yuck) are expecting.
Silly enough when it was searching for mushrooms and stuff in the countryside (er, that’s literally what we pay Waitrose for). Even sillier now tourist boards are shilling “urban foraging” – because surely that’s just rooting through bins?
Calling the bellboy a “butler” doesn’t make him any more useful; it just gives him creepy ideas about unpacking our cases. (And touch our underwear? No. Way.) Frankly, unless he shimmers in in the morning with Jeeves’s secret but impossibly effective hangover cure, we’re not interested.
The “beach butler” beloved of high-end resorts in recent years? Makes no more sense than their “fitness concierge” (bloke who looks nice in shorts), “nightlife curator” (bloke who gets a kickback from whichever bar he recommends to you) or “tea sommelier” (bloke who can tell the difference – at some length, if you’ll let him – between PG Tips and lapsang souchong).
We’re not going to eat it, we’re going to put our heads on it and fall asleep within 15 seconds because we had pre-dinner drinks and a bottle of wine.
It’s a shop. Just because it’s in the posh version of a Portakabin, don’t expect us to get as excited about it as you obviously are. (Same goes for “collabs”, “take-overs” and, doubly so, that ridiculous thing where they put an “x” in between the names of two brands we’ve never heard of anyway.)
OK, there’s nothing new about an idiot getting paid to put a record on, but they earn their place on this list thanks to the travel industry’s saucer-eyed veneration of them, and its insistence that there’s one present at every bar, pool and (if it goes on at this rate) toilet.
Unless there are sharks, it’s just swimming.
Unless there are bears, it’s just camping.
Unless you’re eating the sharks or the bears, it’s just a picnic.
Ever met one? Us neither. That doesn’t seem to stop every B&B with a plug and a broadband cable advertising themselves as the next giga-node in the urban globalista network.
For millennia, physicians and philosophers have debated the true meaning of wellness, but it’s taken the geniuses of the 2020s travel industry to define it conclusively. Turns out it’s “Charging you more for taking chips off the menu”.
“Traditional family-style eating”, “Funky street-food vibe”, “Playful fusion of east meets west”, “Live cooking stations”… We wouldn’t mind if the bored-looking 19-year-old waiter didn’t insist on explaining it when all we want him to do is bring us our drinks. 
Hotel checks what night Taylor Swift is playing in the city. Hotel increases room rates by 40 per cent around those dates. Hotel throws in “special commemorative gift” (probably a postcard). Hotel has cheek to call this “an exciting new trend”.
“Lagom”, “mys” (cozy in Swedish), “friluftsliv”, and this year (from Scotland, apparently) “hurkle-durkle” (lying around in bed, basically). Och, haud yer wheesht, ya bampot.
You can add meaningless phrases like “precision amino repair”, “vibroacoustic” and “sleep coaching” to the brochure all day – oh, you have! – but it’s still a spa, and it’s still basically offering a selection of nice back rubs.
Joining the words “glamorous” and “camping” together overlooks the point that some concepts are simply incompatible. Just ask Mary…