How we made Kuoni’s 2026 travel trends report

I researched and wrote Kuoni's 2026 Travel Trends Report over the winter, working with the marketing team. It launched at IMM at the start of the year, went to print and eventually become the heart of their magazine.

Interview the data

Most trends reports are written backwards. Someone decides the trends in a meeting – usually the ones already in everyone else's trends report – and then goes looking for numbers to prop them up. You can smell these documents a mile off. So can journalists, which is why they never get covered.

We ran it the other way, which is to say, forwards, which is to say, like journalism. The booking data was the source, so I became a data analyst! Where are people actually going that they weren't two years ago? What's quietly collapsing? Which destinations are moving in ways nobody's talking about yet? The Top 20 destinations list came out of that questioning, and some of what it said surprised the people who work there every day. Another trend that leapt out was how people were paring destinations, or combining multiple destinations in a single trip.

That's the test, incidentally. If nothing in your trends report surprises your own staff, you haven't found trends. You've found the brief.

Check everything, then check it again

The unglamorous middle of the project was a data-verification loop that ran right up to the deadline. Every number in the final report traces back to something real. Tedious, and completely non-negotiable – because the whole plan was for the report to end up in front of journalists, and journalists check.

This is the part brand teams underestimate. A trends report is a factual claim about the world with your logo on it. If one stat wobbles under a reporter's scrutiny, the whole document dies, and takes some brand credibility with it. Rigour is the product.

News coverage isn't bolted on

The ITV interview happened because the report contained actual news – findings a journalist could take to an editor and defend. That has to be built in from the first day of research, not sprinkled on by a PR team at the end. We wrote it asking, the whole way through: what's the story here, who would cover it and what would they need from us to do it?

A trends report done properly is one of the best assets a travel brand can own. It positions you as the company that knows where things are going, it gives your MD something to say on camera and it earns its keep for a full year of content, sales conversations and press. Done lazily, it's a PDF nobody opens twice.

The difference is whether anyone interviewed the data.

Ellie Fazan researched and wrote Kuoni's 2026 Travel Trends Report, working with the Kuoni marketing team. The report launched at IMM in early 2026, went to print and led to ITV News coverage for the brand. She writes and researches trends reports for travel brands, alongside brand magazines and tone of voice work.