‘Conscious’ Travel Emerging as Yet Another Hot Luxury Trend
Photo Credit: The Six Senses in Bhutan. Six Senses CEO Neil Jacobs said he avoids using the word "luxury" to describe the experience of staying at a Six Senses property. Six Senses
Skift Take
Do compassion and social consciousness go hand in hand with luxury travel? That's what some luxury travel executives are seeing — and hoping for.
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 tra
