Intentional Travel & Personalized Service: Virtuoso’s Insights on Luxury Travel Trends

Today’s luxury clients want to put their hard-earned money towards travel with intention. It’s not enough anymore to do the bucket list experiences like walking the Dubrovnik walls or throwing a coin in the Trevi Fountain — they want their vacations to feel personalized and impactful, which includes giving back to the local communities they visit.

Whether it’s celebrating a major life milestone with an Antarctic expedition or a multi-gen vacation to bring the family together, luxury travelers want their travel to feel meaningful and special. Off-season travel away from crowds is on the rise, and the top emerging destinations in the luxury space are off-the-beaten-path options like Morocco and Vietnam.

These were the findings revealed at a Virtuoso press conference held on April 7, 2026 in Toronto, which Travel Market Report attended. Combining insight from Virtuoso’s most recent Luxe Report, a recent survey on sustainability, and a panel of travel advisor experts, the presentation showed what trends are shaping how affluent Canadians are booking travel.

Sustainability: ‘An Expectation Nowadays’

Virtuoso’s sustainability survey, which was conducted with 100 Canadian travel advisors, found that nearly half said avoiding overcrowded destinations was the most impactful factor for clients making sustainable choices. The second consideration, at just over one-third, was wanting to support local cultures and communities.

On the topic of avoiding crowds, 74% of advisors have clients choosing to travel during shoulder season to avoid those peak crowds. When asked about motivation, nearly 60% said that avoiding crowds was the primary driver, and only 26% travel in the off-season for lower prices. Interestingly, 8% said their clients are choosing off-season travel to help local economies and cultures year-round.

Where sustainability is lagging is cost. The survey found that willingness to pay for sustainable benefits like benefiting communities (38%) or eco-friendly practices (31%) is growing, but not as fast as shifts in behavior and intent.

According to Erica Tu, of Luxe Travel by Design, sustainability has become a baseline expectation in luxury travel. Referencing cruise in particular, she said that clients don’t come to her asking about sustainability options as much as they expect the luxury options to already be following sustainable practices.

“It is an expectation nowadays within our environment… that at this luxury level, sustainability is automatically there. And I would hear from clients if it was not there.”

Personalization Through Collaboration

Another trend Virtuoso identified is the increasingly collaborative approach to travel planning seen in the luxury space. While these clients do want someone else to take on the burden of making travel arrangements, they want to participate in the process.

“Overall, what we see is that affluent Canadians are looking for travel that feels intelligent, intentional, and deeply personal. It’s really the personalization piece,” said Karen Hardie, Virtuoso’s general manager, Canada. “Increasingly, this cohort doesn’t want to hand their travel over… they want to collaborate on it. They want to co-create together with their travel advisor.”

The panel advisors echoed this sentiment, sharing their own experience with clients who come to them having already done some research. Jakki Prince, of Prince Adventures Travel shared that her clients are coming to her because they want something personalized, and that means being involved in the design process.

“People are looking for collaboration … to design the ideal destination trip for them,” she explained. “I feel that a lot of them have an information overload, and they might have started with initial research and then thought, ‘this is overwhelming.'”

Eleanor Bell, a Direct Travel advisor who specializes in adventure and expedition travel, said that the younger travelers she works with — namely Millennials and Gen-Z — often already have trip ideas and suppliers in mind.

“That demographic has a pretty good understanding about sustainability… they usually have a good idea of the travel partner, cruise line, or tour operator that they want to travel with,” she said, adding that her role as an advisor is to “elevate the luxury experiences from there.”

Shorter Booking Windows Amid Global Uncertainty

A not-so-surprising trend in the luxury space is shorter booking windows as clients adopt a “wait-and-see” mindset due to economic and geopolitical instability.

“I would say my clients specifically are a lot more last-minute now. They’re not planning as far in advance,” said Tu. She qualified this as trips booked within a month to six weeks of departure, sharing that she currently is working with a client who wants to travel somewhere two weeks from now.

Tu recommended advisors make sure their clients choose insurance as a way to safeguard their investment during this time of geopolitical uncertainty. “The number one thing… we all agree on is insurance is so important now because of how the world is changing. You need to have that money protected,” said Tu.

Bell said she is seeing a lot of families either delaying booking their summer vacation or scaling back and reserving some of that budget for a larger trip in the fall or summer 2027. “There [are] definitely places that my clients are trying to avoid, but it’s also creating a nice opportunity to explore destinations that they haven’t previously considered,” she said.