By Hugo Marcos, Secretary-General of CIFFT (International Committee of Tourism Film Festivals)

For decades, destinations competed by showing what they had: landscapes, monuments, infrastructure, miles of coastline. It was a competition of inventory. That logic has run its course today. The contemporary traveler no longer chooses a place for what it possesses, but for what it makes them feel and for who they will become after having lived it.

Skift, in its Megatrends 2026, sums this up with an idea I fully share: we no longer visit places, we visit feelings. It is the definitive shift from a destination economy to an experience economy, and further still, to an emotion economy. And in that territory, a protagonist that spent years in the background steps forward: hospitality.

I understand hospitality as the set of experiences, people and services that make a trip possible: accommodation, gastronomy, service, the design of experiences, the culture that surrounds the visitor. The icon attracts, but it is hospitality that builds loyalty, that brings people back and, above all, that earns recommendations. A monument gets photographed once; hospitality is remembered for a lifetime.

How do you communicate something so intangible? With audiovisual content. The data is conclusive: according to a 2025 Expedia Group study, 71% of travelers say video influences their choice of destination, compared with just 24% who say the same of still images. Google, for its part, has found that around 65% of travelers watch videos to decide where to go. Audiovisual content does not merely inform: it turns a place into a desire.

But there is a condition. The traveler of 2026 values transparency as much as beauty. A spectacular shot is no longer enough; they demand truth. Sustainability, community, identity and purpose have stopped being decoration for the story and become its argument. The tourism communication that works is the kind that builds values, not the kind that lists attractions.

For destinations, this shift in mindset is profound and urgent. It means no longer communicating the catalog of what a place has- and instead communicating meaning- what it makes you feel. It means putting people, not buildings, at the center of the frame. It means understanding that every destination now competes for a place in the traveler's imagination, not on their to-do list.

The summary fits in one sentence: we no longer communicate what a destination has, but what it feels like to experience it. Whoever understands this first will win the next decade of tourism.

Sources

• Skift, Megatrends 2026.
• Expedia Group, study on video and travel decisions, October 2025.
• Google / Think with Google, statistics on video and tourism.