Why we travel now: the end of the souvenir economy

How the shift from having to experiencing is redrawing hotel revenue models

There is a photograph that exists in some version in almost every family home. A person standing in front of something famous — the Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, Niagara Falls — holding a small ceramic replica of the thing they are standing in front of. The photograph and the replica together constituted the proof. You were there. You brought something back.

That ritual is fading. Not because people have stopped traveling to the Eiffel Tower, but because the logic behind it has changed. The proof is no longer in the object you carry home. It is in the experience itself — and increasingly, in the quality of that experience. The souvenir was always a substitute for something. What travelers want now is the real thing.

This is not a minor cultural shift. It is a fundamental reordering of how a generation spends its money, and it has consequences for the hospitality industry that go well beyond which gift shops survive.

The decade-long shift that the pandemic finished

The move from owning to experiencing had been underway long before 2020. For over a decade, research consistently showed that younger consumers derived more satisfaction from experiences than from possessions — that a weekend away generated more lasting happiness than a new piece of technology at the same price point. Spending patterns followed. The share of consumer budgets allocated to experiences — dining, travel, live events, cultural activities — had been rising steadily across most developed markets since at least 2010.

What the pandemic did was accelerate and deepen that shift in ways that are still playing out. Two years of enforced stillness, during which possessions continued to accumulate and provided very little comfort, settled the question for a lot of people. Things didn't help. Experiences — the ones that had been taken away — were what was missed. When the world reopened, spending followed the lesson.

The data since 2022 has been broadly consistent. Travel spending has recovered and in many major consumer markets grown faster than spending on goods. Within travel, spending on experiences at the destination — tours, activities, restaurants, cultural access — has grown faster than spending on accommodation and transport. Travelers are not just going more. They are spending more deliberately once they arrive, and they are making choices about where to stay based on how well a property fits into the experience they are trying to have.

Where hotels sit in the experience stack

For much of the history of modern hospitality, the hotel was the destination. The room, the pool, the restaurant, the service — these were the point. The city outside was a backdrop.

That positioning has inverted for a significant and growing share of travelers. The destination is the point. The hotel is the base from which it is accessed — and increasingly, the lens through which it is experienced. A property that understands this shift earns a place in the traveler's experience. One that doesn't becomes a commodity measured primarily by price and location.

This is not a threat to hospitality. It is a reframing of what hospitality is for — and what it can charge for.

The hotels gaining commercial ground in this environment share a recognizable set of characteristics. They are embedded in their location rather than imported into it. Their food and beverage offer reflects where they are. Their design draws on local material and visual culture. Their staff can tell a guest where to eat, what to see, and how to spend a day in ways that no algorithm has yet replicated. They are not just near the experience. They are part of it.

That kind of property commands a rate premium that has nothing to do with thread counts or bathroom fixtures. It commands it because it is genuinely difficult to replicate, and because it delivers something the traveler came for.

The revenue implications

The shift from having to experiencing changes not just what travelers spend on, but how they make decisions before they arrive.

A traveler buying an experience doesn't shop the same way as a traveler buying a room. Price comparison matters less when the thing being bought isn't easily comparable. A hotel with a genuinely distinctive offer — one that contributes to the experience the traveler is trying to have — sits outside the commodity pricing conversation to a degree that a well-located but undifferentiated property does not.

This shows up in booking behavior. Properties with strong experiential identities tend to show higher direct booking rates, lower OTA dependency, and stronger repeat visitation than comparable properties without them. The traveler who chose a hotel because it was part of what they were there for is more likely to return — and more likely to tell someone else.

Ancillary revenue follows the same logic. A traveler oriented around experience is a natural buyer of what the hotel can offer beyond the room: the dinner, the guided excursion, the cooking class, the locally sourced gift that is genuinely connected to where they are. This is not upselling. It is serving the actual motivation the traveler arrived with.

What this asks of hospitality

None of this requires a property to reinvent itself overnight. But it does require a clear-eyed answer to a straightforward question: does this hotel contribute to the experience a traveler comes here to have, or does it simply accommodate them while they have it elsewhere?

The difference between those two positions is commercial as much as philosophical. A property that can answer the first half of that question — that can articulate what it adds to the experience of being in its location — has something to sell that transcends the rate sheet. A property that answers the second half is competing on price and location against every other option in the market.

The souvenir wasn't just a small keepsake. It was a symbol of what travel used to be: something you did, collected a token from, and brought home. What travel has become is harder to package and easier to charge for. The experience doesn't fit in a bag. It has to be delivered where it happens.

That is where hospitality lives now.

Next in Why We Travel Now: You are where you go

by Markus Busch, Editor/Publisher Hospitality.today

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