Tours, activities and attractions have moved from a fragmented
afterthought to one of travel's fastest-growing segments. A new report from
Arival and Phocuswright, Travel
Experiences 2026: Market Sizing, Operator and Consumer Behavior Highlights, sizes the global market at $253 billion in 2024, a full recovery to
prepandemic levels, with growth to $342 billion projected by 2029.
The report builds this forecast through a three-step model: mapping
supply across 22 major experience categories, estimating revenue using operator
survey data from Arival's Global Operator Landscape study (over 5,600 qualified
responses) and layering in third-party economic and travel forecasts.
Phocuswright's own gross bookings data provides the broader travel market
context throughout.
The growth story is stark. Experiences bookings grew 17% in 2024
compared with 6% for travel overall, an acceleration that followed a much
harder pandemic-era collapse. Bookings fell 78% in 2020, a steeper drop than
travel saw overall, and the sector's rebound since has outpaced the rest of the
industry as it caught back up to pre-pandemic levels. Growth is expected to
settle into steadier, more sustainable rates of around 6% annually through
2029, but the report is clear that experiences will keep growing faster than
most other travel categories even as the catch-up phase ends.
On the consumer side, the report finds that experience bookings are
rarely a single purchase. Travelers who booked a tour, activity or attraction
did so multiple times per trip on average, ranging from 3.5 to 4.7 bookings
depending on category and region. U.S. travelers averaged more experiences per
category than Europeans despite shorter average trip lengths (7.1 nights versus
8.3), a gap the report attributes partly to differences in trip pacing and
partly to the sheer variety of options available at U.S. destinations.
Spending tells a more complicated story. Per-person spend on tours has
held roughly flat in the U.S. over the past three years while activities and
attractions spend has ticked up modestly. In Europe, spend across all three
categories has softened. The report frames this as travelers prioritizing the
number of experiences booked over the amount spent per experience, a sign of
budget-consciousness rather than declining interest in the category overall.
Distribution has grown more slowly here than in the rest of travel. Only
33% of experiences were booked online in 2025, compared with 64% of travel
bookings overall, even as specialized marketplaces like Viator and GetYourGuide
expand their inventory. The report ties this gap to two forces working
together: a fragmented, ultra-local supply base (more than 70% of operators are
small or micro-businesses) that has never consolidated the way air, hotel and
cruise did, and genuine traveler comfort with offline booking. Nearly 1 in 5
travelers under 55 and 24% of those 55+ booked as a walk-up on their most
recent trip, a pattern the report calls unique to the experiences category
among travel verticals.
Booking timing varies meaningfully by age and region. Only 12% to 30% of
experiences are booked same-day, and older travelers book same-day far more
often than younger ones. Across both the U.S. and Europe, the top reasons
travelers cite for booking in advance are wanting concrete plans locked in and
knowing in advance that they wanted the experience, followed closely by concern
that spots might sell out, a factor the report links to capacity limits and
overcrowding at popular attractions.
The report closes with a
category-by-category breakdown of the most popular experience types.
Sightseeing tours top the list in the U.S. at 42%, while cultural sites and
landmarks lead in Europe at 47%. Spa and wellness activities are notably more
popular among Europeans (33%) than Americans (23%), while Americans show a
stronger preference for culinary tours and classes (40%) than their European
counterparts (32%). These regional preference gaps, paired with the booking
timing and channel data, give operators and marketers a granular view of how
demand differs by market.
Get the full data on market sizing, booking channels and traveler
behavior by region. Read
the report now.
Key questions addressed by this report
include:
- How large is the global travel
experiences sector, and how is it projected to grow in the coming years?
- How do U.S. and European
travelers incorporate tours, activities and attractions into their trips?
- Which types of experiences are
most popular in the U.S. and Europe, and what do those patterns reveal about
traveler preferences?
- How do booking windows and
purchase timing for experiences differ from other travel components such as air
and lodging?
- What portion of the experiences
sector has moved online, and why do offline and in-person bookings remain so
important?
- How do experience booking
behaviors differ by age group, region and experience type?
Phocuswright and Arival's Travel Experiences 2026: Market Sizing, Operator and Consumer Behavior Highlights
Travel Experiences 2026: Market Sizing, Operator and Consumer Behavior Highlights, produced jointly by Phocuswright and Arival, sizes and forecasts the global experiences market through 2029 and examines how consumers engage with experiences in practice.