LISBON — A panel of travel advisors provided insight into current luxury travel trends during the Preferred Hotels & Resorts Global Conference 2024, with high hotel rates emerging as a key talking point.

During the panel on Wednesday, Silvio Rebmann, CEO and founder of Berlin-based Cube Travel, told the audience that while business has been strong so far this year, he has begun to see a market shift away from high-priced destinations such as Italy and toward destinations where clients can get more for their money.

Rebmann added that with hotel rates so high, guests are arriving with equally high expectations about service.

“When hotels are promising an exquisite kind of service level and charging a certain exquisite price point, then they need to deliver,” said Rebmann. “And we feel that this [has become] more and more challenging.”

According to Nathalie Giske, senior manager of strategic lodging partnerships at American Express Lifestyle Services, hoteliers are facing increased pressure to wow Gen Z and Millennial travelers.

Giske reported that Gen Z and Millennials currently account for roughly 30% of global luxury spending, significantly increasing their share of that market from a year earlier.

“This younger population is looking for wellness, they’re looking for experiences, they’re looking for F&B, they’re looking for you to know them,” added Giske. “They also tend to expect exactly what you promise, and they expect you to over-deliver.”

Namai Bishop, founder of London-based LuxePrive Travel, echoed that sentiment, pointing out that younger travelers are taking a more experience-forward approach to travel planning.

“The younger demographic, Gen Z and Millennials, will book a whole trip around a dinner reservation that they made at one restaurant,” said Bishop. “They will go somewhere based on an experience that they heard about, and they will build a whole itinerary around it.”

Despite Gen Z and Millennials’ penchant for online research tools like ChatGPT, Giske said most still value the expertise of travel advisors, particularly for bucket-list trips. Citing data from the American Express Travel Trends Report, Giske said 58% of the survey’s Gen Z and Millennial respondents want to use a travel agent or trusted advisor to help them book major trips throughout the year.

“When it comes to Gen Z and Millennials, they’re taking multiple trips [and] there will be trips where they want that expertise,” said Giske. “They’re very tech savvy, they will do their own research, they will come up with a ChatGPT itinerary and places that they want to go to, but they will then come to an advisor.”

The Preferred Hotels conference kicked off at the Epic Sana Marques Hotel in Lisbon on Tuesday. The event drew approximately 350 hotel industry professionals, making it Preferred’s largest conference to date.