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The biggest travel trend for 2025? Staying away longer

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With TikTok tips to turn two days of annual leave into a five-day holiday and workers sneaking in meetings on the road, travellers are making their trips count – by making them last.

In August 2024, the director of a viral tourism advert for Oslo told the BBC he’d always prefer sitting at someone’s kitchen table drinking milk to pit-stopping at tourist traps. This was, after all, the summer that tourism came back, and arguably the summer that tourism went too far, with bad traveller behaviour and troubling overtourism hitting many popular destinations. While the urge to get away doesn’t seem to be dwindling, industry experts say travellers in 2025 are plotting longer stays and finding ways to stretch their time away from home and work to be as long as possible and further immerse themselves in a single destination.
According to Skift Research’s 2025 Travel Outlook report, travel companies are anticipating a 24% rise in the number of trips people are planning for the year ahead compared to 2024. Globally, long leisure trips stand out as the most popular type of travel ahead of weekend getaways and road trips, with Skift’s report calling 2025 “the year of long getaways”. This is particularly true in China, India and Germany. In the US, one quarter of respondents said they expect to take a long international or cross-continental vacation this year, though slightly more expect to take shorter trips.
“Travellers are over the frenzy of taking photos in wildly packed tourist sites or iconic hotels just to say they’ve been there,” explained Julia Carter, founder of luxury travel company Craft Travel. “Instead, they now increasingly recognise that when it comes to travel, a destination only really comes alive when you slow things down.”
That slowdown is stretching to an average trip duration close to two weeks for luxury travellers, according to the Luxury Travel Report by Zicasso, another high end travel-planning company. Founder and CEO Brian Tan told the BBC, “[We’ve] noted a continued increase in average length of travel to 13.5 days, as well as more travellers preferring a single-destination personalised journey, where they can explore a culture more deeply, instead of multi-country trips.” The trip duration increase has been a slow one (it’s only up from 13.4 days average in 2024), but the report adds that 76.2% of respondents prefer single-country trips for 2025, which Zicasso has qualified as a “trend toward depth over breadth in travel experiences”.

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Trapped in the dark for 35 hours – Red Sea dive-boat survivors tell of terrifying escapes

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“By the end, I was just wondering how I would prefer to die.”
Spending 35 hours trapped in a pitch-black air pocket in the upturned hull of a boat has taken its toll on Lucianna Galetta, her voice cracking as she recounts her ordeal.
A video she managed to film briefly using the light on her phone, now shared with the BBC, shows the space where she thought her life might end – and how surging sea water and floating debris prevented her escape

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Buy something or leave, Starbucks says

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Starbucks says it is reversing rules for its cafes in North America that allowed people to use their facilities even if they had not bought anything.
The changes, which are set to come into force from 27 January, are a U-turn from a policy introduced six years ago that allowed people to linger in Starbucks outlets and use their toilets without making a purchase.
The move is part of the “back to Starbucks” strategy – a plan announced by the firm’s new boss as he tries to tackle flagging sales.
The world’s biggest coffee chain says its new code of conduct – which also addresses harassment and bans smoking and outside alcohol – aims to make its stores more welcoming.
“Implementing a Coffeehouse Code of Conduct… is a practical step that helps us prioritise our paying customers who want to sit and enjoy our cafes”, a Starbucks spokesperson told BBC News.
“These updates are part of a broader set of changes we are making to enhance the cafe experience as we work to get back to Starbucks.”
The company said the new rules will be displayed at every store and staff will be instructed to ask anyone who violates the code of conduct to leave. That includes allowing employees to call the police when necessary.
In 2018, Starbucks decided to allow free access to its coffee shops and toilets after the controversial arrest of two men at one of its Philadelphia cafes.
Other changes set to be introduced later this month include offering one free refill of hot or iced coffee for customers who buy a drink to consume on the premises.
Starbucks has been trying to boost flagging sales as it grappled with a backlash to price increases and boycotts sparked by the Israel-Gaza war.
Brian Niccol, who previously headed the Mexican food chain Chipotle, was brought into Starbucks last year to help turn the business around.
Mr Niccol has been trying to improve the customer experience at Starbucks’ cafes by revamping its menus and coffee shops.
Starbucks said the policy change only applied to North America and not its UK stores.
However, it has not yet responded to requests for comment on the details of its UK policy.

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A Turkish film and TV star’s guide to Antalya, Turkey

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Actor Ekin Koç called seaside Antalya home before conquering the world of Turkish film. Here are his picks, from hiking the Lycian Road to catching a concert at the Aspendos Theatre.

Though its name may be less familiar to overseas travellers than Istanbul, the Turkish resort city of Antalya is no stranger to visitors. Founded by the Ancient Greeks as Attalia in the 2nd Century BCE, Antalya has since been occupied by the Romans, the Seljuk Sultanate and the Ottomans; even withstanding a brief Italian occupation after World War One before Turkey claimed independence. Today, Antalya – the crowning jewel of the Turkish Riviera and, along with Istanbul, one of the world’s most visited cities in 2023 – attracts both families and A-list celebrities with its 2,000-year-old Old Town and stunning turquoise waters.
Sometimes, the celebrity strolling Antalya’s spectacular seashore is actually a native. We caught up with Antalya-born film star Ekin Koç (best known to English-speaking audiences as Turkish business advisor Kadir in HBO’s Succession) to get his take on his beautiful hometown, studded by the Taurus mountains and cradled by the Mediterranean sea.
“If you’re from Antalya, you have a special connection with the sea,” says Koç. “The sea is everywhere. We eat from the sea, we swim, we sit next to the sea. I’ve always loved being in connection with the sea.”

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