Living segments in tourism are reshaping how we think about travellers, moving beyond fixed targets to reflect real, fluid identities and ways of living.
Tourism must reflect the very heartbeat of society: language changes, relationships shift, identities are redefined and, with them, the ways of travelling. The year 2025 is one of these threshold moments. Traditional boundaries between generations, roles, family models and even ways of understanding companionship and solitude are dissolving, giving rise to a new map of experience. In this map there are no longer fixed targets, but living segments: people who move across fluid categories, who seek travel not only to rest or discover, but to feel represented, welcomed and free.
The idea of a “living segment” arises from the need to interpret travel as a complex human act. Every traveller is a constellation of desires, limitations, aspirations, conditions and values. It is no longer enough to define a target as “families”, “over 60” or “singles”: today identities overlap. There are mixed families composed of multiple generations or cultures; seniors who no longer recognise themselves in the concept of “retirement” but in that of movement and vitality; solo travellers who seek temporary social connections; LGBTQ+ communities who demand authenticity and respect; and a growing number of people who travel with their pets, considered an integral part of their emotional core. These are the living segments of a tourism that grows not through numbers, but through awareness.
The global context favours this paradigm shift. According to data from American Express Global Travel Trends 2025, more than 70% of travellers worldwide plan at least one trip per year dedicated to authentic and personalised experiences, with particular attention to sustainability, safety and accessibility. At the same time, Condé Nast Traveler highlights how the keyword of contemporary tourism is “belonging”: to belong to a place, to a story, to a temporary community of people who share a journey or a dream. Travel is no longer consumption, but recognition.
From Fixed Targets to Living Segments in Tourism
Mixed Families: Designing the Holiday as a Relational Ecosystem
In this scenario, every living segment expresses a different way of belonging, and therefore a different way of travelling.
Mixed families embody better than any other group the complexity of contemporary relationships. They are not only nuclei composed of parents and children, but often interweavings of generations, cultures and different needs. A family today may consist of a grandfather travelling with his grandchildren, an intercultural couple with teenage children, single parents sharing a holiday with friends or with a new life partner. In this variety, the travel experience becomes a laboratory of coexistence.
These families seek holidays in which each person can recognise themselves and feel part of a whole, without losing their autonomy. They want places that offer safety and freedom, facilities capable of accommodating heterogeneous needs, services that do not force them to choose between comfort and authenticity. The ideal holiday for them is one that combines group activities with personal experience, that includes both discovery and rest, that makes it easy to manage food intolerances, disabilities or simply different rhythms.
A resort in Costa Rica, for example, has built its offer precisely around this idea: in the morning, adventure programmes for children in natural parks; at midday, cooking and pottery workshops for adults; at sunset, shared moments of relaxation by the sea. There is no single path, but a weave of parallel experiences that meet in the pleasure of being together. It is a tourism that observes people, accompanies them, recognises them.
It is not enough to offer “baby clubs” or “family rooms”: an integrated vision is needed, where every member finds their own dimension. It is a logistical challenge, but also a cultural one: training staff in inclusive language, creating spaces for intergenerational mediation, communicating that “family” does not have a single form.
If mixed families represent the plurality of relationships, active seniors represent the revolution of time.
They live an age once associated with stillness and transform it into a resource of energy and knowledge. They are not “silver” tourists, but mature, curious, autonomous, tech-savvy travellers, often with great economic availability and, above all, with the desire to live quality experiences.
Their idea of travel is slow but intense. They want to understand, not merely visit. They seek accessible yet non-trivial destinations; they prefer comfort but also authenticity. They are protagonists of a cultural and regenerative tourism that combines well-being, history, nature and human relationships.
Imagine a couple in their mid-sixties spending three weeks in Puglia, alternating walks among olive trees with cooking classes and encounters with local artisans. They use an app to book visits and services, but also love chatting with the owner of the masseria hosting them. They seek silence and storytelling, beauty and simplicity. In this type of travel, technology does not replace the human experience: it facilitates it, amplifies it, makes it more fluid.
For this segment, innovation must dialogue with comfort and trust. Facilities must be accessible but not medicalised; design must convey care, not assistance. Senior travellers pay great attention to service quality, but also to their relationship with staff, to attention to detail, to discreet safety. They are loyal customers, but only when they perceive authenticity.
Social solo travellers, the “MeMoon”, and the search for self through travel
are perhaps the newest and most representative phenomenon of our time. They travel alone, but not to escape: rather, they seek a space of personal freedom, their own rhythm, a journey that is both introspection and encounter. They are not isolated, but selective: they want to decide when and how to share. In a world dominated by constant connection, they choose to connect consciously.
For these travellers, solitude is not absence but fullness. A boutique hotel in Iceland, for example, organises storytelling evenings around a fire for those who wish to share their experiences, but also leaves complete freedom to remain silent. An urban resort in Tokyo offers “table sharing” at breakfast: anyone who wants can join a communal table and meet other guests. The key is the possibility of choosing, of feeling part of a temporary community without obligation.
Designing for social solo travellers means understanding that the need for autonomy can coexist with the desire for connection. Spaces must inspire trust and welcome; itineraries must be flexible; technologies must allow encounters to happen naturally: apps that highlight shared events or excursions, digital communities that anticipate physical meeting, experiences that enhance individual uniqueness. Hospitality for solo travellers must be empathetic: no one seeks pity or compassion, but simply a place where they can be themselves.
The LGBTQ+ community is experiencing a phase of extraordinary tourism maturity today.
After years of invisibility or stereotyped proposals, the LGBTQ+ segment demands—and obtains—quality experiences based on authenticity and respect. It is no longer about creating separate spaces, but building truly inclusive tourism, where diversity is not a theme but a natural condition.
An LGBTQ+ journey in 2025 is, first of all, an experience of freedom. Travellers look for places where they feel safe, welcomed, represented, but not “labelled”. They want the facility, the staff, and the communication to convey real openness, not marketing. It is the difference between a hotel displaying a “gay-friendly” logo and a hotel that trains its staff, adopts anti-discrimination policies, and collaborates with local LGBTQ+ organisations.
A tour in Andalusia, for example, can become a queer cultural itinerary: visits to historic cities, gastronomic experiences, artistic workshops, and encounters with local communities. Here, the difference is not the theme of the trip, but the way it is conceived—respectful, natural, free of clichés. In this sense, destinations that choose to invest in true inclusion, even in countries where social sensibility is evolving, build not only a tourism product but a political message of openness and civility.
Alongside these segments, there is another form of travel that speaks of bonds, affection and loyalty: travel with pets.
It is a fast-growing market, driven by the increasing humanisation of animals, now considered true members of the family. According to Global Market Insights, the market for pet travel services exceeds two billion dollars and grows each year at remarkable rates.
Behind these numbers lies a profound cultural phenomenon. Travelling with a dog or a cat is not just a logistical issue, but a way of living the relationship. The owner does not want to leave the animal behind, but include it. They want pet-friendly beaches, hotels with dedicated services, and restaurants that welcome without hesitation. And they want to know that the animal will be treated with the same care they reserve for themselves.
In Tuscany, a small relais has built its reputation by offering a fully welcoming experience for travellers with pets: rooms with direct access to gardens, dedicated menus, play areas and even yoga classes with dogs. It is a simple yet meaningful example of how tourism can evolve by responding to authentic emotional needs. It is not just about hosting an animal, but understanding that for many people, the animal is the home they bring with them.
All these segments, mixed families, active seniors, social solo travellers, LGBTQ+ communities and travellers with pets, have one thing in common: they represent the complexity of the real world. Each carries with it a story of change and an invitation to rethink travel not as a product but as a relationship. They are living segments because they shift, intermingle, and evolve. A single person may belong to multiple categories: a senior travelling alone with their dog, a mixed family with LGBTQ+ members, a mature couple experiencing solitude as an opportunity for rebirth.
This overlap of identities is the true challenge of tourism in 2025. Personalisation can no longer be limited to selecting packages; it must become empathetic design. Travellers ask for accessibility, but also authenticity; comfort, but also meaning. They want to be seen, not classified. They want to know that behind the tourism offer there is a human thought, not only an algorithm.
The most forward-thinking destinations are already responding to this call.
In Japan, some railway companies offer assistance services for seniors but also discounts for solo travellers, integrating the logic of comfort with that of community. In Iceland, operators promote LGBTQ+ and pet-friendly experiences as part of their national identity, not as a niche. In Latin America, resorts dedicated to mixed families become centres of culture and exchange, where diversity is the norm.
Behind these innovations lies a simple principle: designing for real needs. Not slogans, not fleeting trends, but concrete responses to human requirements. This is where tourism reveals its deepest function: creating connections. Every guest, every traveller, carries a different story. And every facility, every operator, has the opportunity to welcome it with intelligence, sensitivity and professionalism.
The future of tourism will not be a sum of segments, but a network of relationships. Hyper-personalisation will not be only a matter of data, but of listening. Accessibility will not be limited to architectural barriers, but will include empathy, language, attention, time. Inclusion will not be a label, but a daily practice, visible in gestures and choices.
In this sense, designing for living segments is an act of strategic humanity: placing the person at the centre not as a customer, but as an individual bearer of meaning. It means investing in staff training, because kindness and competence are technologies of hospitality. It means designing flexible infrastructures, because travel is movement. It means rethinking communication, because every message builds or breaks trust.
The tourism of the future will be the one able to read diversity as a resource. Where mixed families become ambassadors of coexistence, active seniors witnesses of curiosity, social solo travellers symbols of freedom, the LGBTQ+ community carriers of authenticity, and travellers with pets examples of care and responsibility.
Together, they will shape a tourism no longer measured only in arrivals or overnight stays, but in connections. A tourism that does not seek to classify, but to understand. A tourism that recognises that every journey, ultimately, is a meeting between worlds, ages, languages, silences, differences.
And so the question, for those working in the sector, becomes inevitable: are we ready to design for living beings, not for categories?
Because if we are, tourism in 2025 will not only be more inclusive or more profitable: it will be more real. It will finally be human.
sources
• “The Biggest Travel Trends to Expect in 2025”, Condé Nast Traveller.
• “2025 Global Travel Trends Report”, American Express.
• “The state of family travel 2025: Trends, tips and top destinations”, ABC News.
• “Top Multi-generational Travel Trends For 2025”, SuperAging News.
• “Pet Travel Services Market Size Report, 2025–2034”, GMI Insights.
• “30+ Pet Travel Statistics [2025 Update]”, HotelAgio.
