To Infinity and Beyond: Travel’s New Frontiers are beyond sky-high

Editor’s note: From extending your longevity potential through health tourism, to exploring the outer limits of existence with a journey to space, the travel industry is back in the business of pushing its new frontiers out ever further, as Luke Clark explores.

Higher, faster, further and deeper – the golden age of post-War exploration saw a time when humankind stretched its potential to previously unimaginable limits. We went deeper into our oceans, climbed our highest peaks, and sent humans far off into space.

Decades later, the travel industry is once again exploring how we can democratise that process. Having spent recent years when our farthest limits were our homes and our grocery stores, people are enjoying the idea once more that our lives are for living ­– and that previously unimagined frontiers of travel may soon be in our grasps.

The ever-shifting frontiers of travel

Of course, the frontiers of global travel are forever expanding and contracting. Some of the reasons are nature-made: the global Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) travel market each year for instance, in 2023 alone, worth US$844.5 million.

Man-made frontier shifts are happening regularly too. The rugby tour by the British and Irish Lions, who will tour Australia in 2025, has already seen tickets allocations in March 2024 sell out in 24 hours, with between 35,000-40,000 travelling Lions fans expected to make the trip, leading to an expected injection of over A$200 million into Australia’s economy.

Even the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list garners such global excitement each year, that destinations such as Peru, have in the past mounted aggressive campaigns to raise their culinary profile. Noted offshoots to the list now include Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants and Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants (launched in 2013).

Then there’s the FIFA World Cup. Apart from its many noted governance issues, one reason the global football organisation’s reputation is so mired in scandal around the awarding of the Cup competition every four years, is that the tournament is pitched as having huge transformative benefits for its hosts. Despite massive financial and human costs, the IMF estimates that for the Qatar tournament in 2022, tourism spending by visitors and World Cup-related broadcasting revenue was worth between US$2.3 and $4.1 billion.

Then of course, you have the ‘Swiftie Economy’. Taylor Swift’s Era’s Tour has been an economic juggernaut. In the US, the domestic tour is believed have produced a direct economic impact equal to at least 55 American Football Super Bowl Finals. In all, the complete 146-stop global schedule is estimated by Duke University to have had a total economic impact of US$80 billion.

Other recent frontier-shifting ventures have been technical ones. In Las Vegas, the new US$2.9 billion music and entertainment venue, the Sphere, is already redefining what people imagine is possible for a live experience. With a capacity of up to 20,000, the Sphere features a 160,000 square foot LED media plane (or four football fields), offering those both inside and out, new dimensions of immersive entertainment. Billed as the most expensive entertainment venue ever built, the Sphere is already stretching our frontiers for entertainment and art – and for now, also stretching what we mean by “only in Vegas”.

Health tourism heads travel’s brave new niche expanders

Meantime, at WiT Singapore 2024, representatives of travel’s other expanding niches were on hand, ready to help travel partners explore and expand their brave new travel worlds.

According to Yahoo Finance, medical tourism globally was already worth US$9.5 billion and is anticipated to reach USD$79.4 billion by 2032. Successful destinations catering to medical tourists globally include South Korea, India, Thailand, Japan, Germany, Norway, and Sweden.

Located in central Bangkok, RaKxa offers integrated programmes that blend personal medical science with alternative holistic practices. Addressing the modern truism that “health is wealth”, the destination has a total of 60 villas and is the definition of an integrated health, wellness and hospitality experience.

“Our guests who return do so because we really take care of them,” said Wsinee Sukjaroenkraisri, Executive Vice President of RAKxa Integrative Wellness. “For every unit, those in the restaurant, the therapist, the medical team, all know you and your needs when you check in: so, it feels like there are seven people – doctors, chef, physiotherapist, trainer, all working together on a personal programme just for one of you,” she noted.

She said one guest revisited RaKxa eight times in two years, while another stayed first for a period of two months, then another five months.

While most today view the popular pursuit of longevity as simply expanding one’s lifespan, others now seek to add the dimension of ‘health span’, Wsinee noted. “For that, we take a proactive and preventive approach,” she said. “We blend a hospitality approach with delivering on health, well-being, happiness and relaxation aspects.”

 

The perfect luxury villa in paradise

Globally, the luxury travel market size was valued at US $1,740 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow at nearly five percent until 2031. Pieter Brudyn, Founder & CEO of In Residence in South Africa, is one of the operators seeking to grow this niche market.

His operation arose almost by accident. “I had a sideline business where we did interior projects. As clients became more wealthy and my projects grew, when they arrived at the property, it had to be perfect,” he recalled. “So almost by default, I went into property management. In time, they added additional products, including transfers.

“We started selling through the normal OTA channels, but I realised it was still very fragmented. So, we said, let’s really focus on the guest experience.”

As the demand grew, costs did too: and scaling became a more attractive proposition. The company now positions itself as ‘a premium lifestyle management company, offering an international portfolio of immaculate luxury villas supported by premier in-house concierge services.’

“I realised that this world was really opening up,” said Brudyn. “Today, I’ve got global aspirations on the website. We now have 605 villas, and my dream is to represent the top 2,500 villas in the world.”

Of course, catering to this level of guest is not necessarily easy, he noted, and the villa experience will never have the same number of staff as a hotel. That said, these are beautiful properties in stunning locations, so people do soon adjust to the rhythms of their new surroundings: “The first few days are critical. My motto is, when you walk in, I want you to start relaxing.”

To the edge of the world and back

Once the exclusive preserve of state-sponsored missions for exploration and science, space travel had until this Millennium, remained the one thing that even money could not buy.

That all changed 23 years ago, when American businessman Dennis Tito, paid US$20 million to fly inside a Russian-built rocket, into space. More recently, entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, spent US$200 million, so that he and three other civilians, could visit space. Space tourism as an industry was worth roughly US$385 million in 2021, with this figure forecast to reach US$555 million by 2030.

Of course, as with paid missions to Everest, the fact that these space tourists are not properly trained astronauts, is not without a degree of controversy. But where there’s a market, and suitable safety and insurance, there will always be those seeking to find a way – and today’s nascent space travel market is the result.

First though, WiT asked two Singaporean pioneers of this niche industry, why take people to space, our final frontier?  “Ironically, I’m not a fan of Star Trek,” admits Jess Yap, founder of Intriq Journey in Singapore.

“For the past 34 years, my business has been to bring people to some of the remotest corners of the world. And I happened to hear about the possibility of space travel 15 years ago. It suddenly sparked my interest: “Wow, even in this lifetime, there’s a possibility that we can go to space?” That really got me excited, and that’s where we started talking. And just last year, in 2023, I found out that Virgin Galactic product is now commercial-ready. So, I wanted to be the first leisure business to start promoting space travel.”

As such, Intriq is now a preferred agent for Virgin Galactic.

Following a career that ranged from flying air balloons to helping deliver the first A380 to the Singapore government, Marvin Lim, founder & managing director of IN.Genius, became involved in testing the hypersonic space plane demonstrator in the South China Sea. Lim’s team next set about researching how Russia had conducted its earliest space tests, before cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space in 1961.

“We found out about these fantastic stratospheric balloons,” Lim noted. “Eventually I said, okay, I’ll start this crazy company IN.Genius, whereby we use stratospheric balloons very gently, instead of rocketry. It’s safer: and is just a different way of doing things: but we can cross the Armstrong line, where the blue zone ends, and enter space.”

Significantly, this style of space travel costs significantly less than Virgin Galactic, at around US$100,000. “So common people, not only the ultra-rich or the super-fit, can also dream of going to space,” said Lim.

As Yap describes, Virgin Galactic’s US$600,000 space ride is of course offering a different level of space trip: “It’s a five-day experience that starts off with the arrival day into the spaceport in New Mexico, in the United States, followed by two days of training and preparation – teaching you how to do simple things like getting in and out of your chair.”

“And then on the actual flight day, you’ll be suited up, and then up to space – where the passenger will feel the G-force effects: and is up in space for three minutes, where they’ll feel weightlessness, before they get back down to earth.”

As a travel agent, Yap says her job is to help advise guests as to what type of space experience is right for them. “Not everybody appreciates the G-force effect. Some want a very comfortable, non-invasive flight out to space. Regardless, there’s a product that’s out there, I hope, in the near future.”

Currently, she says Virgin Galactic is only selling 1,000 ticket slots, with around 700 booked already. Asia accounts for a small percentage of tickets sold, but she sees growing interest in the region.

So what is the experience like? “I’ve not personally been out there, but I can say, from the 37 astronauts who have been there and back, most agree that their experience up to space has been a life-transforming journey,” said Yap. “After the flight, you experience the intense emotions of returning – and definitely, a deeper appreciation of planet Earth.”

For the IN.Genius experience, the balloon space travel experience is not only cheaper, but a more accessible, more serene journey:“It’s a chance for a person who is not astronaut-fit, to go up gently at five meter per second. That’s about 20 kilometers per hour,” described Lim. “There’s no high G-force. It provides another option for a different group of traveller. But it’s that ruggedness: and the fact that you come back, can tell people, ‘I’ve been out there, I’ve donned a space suit, and I understand what +3 PSI means.’”

For Yap, even watching the video of the first Virgin Galactic space travellers brought her to tears: “It’s that connection, and that whole experience of being up there, so far away in space – and that you are such a little person in the vast perspective of things.”

“Then that final touchdown back home, and that greater appreciation of Earth. I think it’s really a very personal and transformational journey – just to be able to see Earth from space.”

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