Seven of the coolest new travel trends in 2023

Think Airbnb for dining. These apps hook you up with locals who love cooking, love hosting and are willing to fling open their doors and feed you homemade gourmet food.

The menus typically riff on the area’s specialities, though in larger cities there’s a United Nations of cuisines on offer.

The idea started as a way to sample Grandma’s famous cooking, but now offers variations on the theme. Jump into a pizza-making class in an authentic Neapolitan pizzeria. Join a lunchtime crêpe party in Paris or a walking tour of the best bagel joints in New York.

Between the two leading apps there’s something every budget in almost every destination. See: ;

Helping my 89-year-old, mobility-impaired mother get on a flight to Brisbane recently brought home how tricky getting about is for some travellers – and the logistics of stowing walkers or other aids.

Two brilliant innovations in this space are Air4All and Revolve Air – amazing products for disabled or wheelchair-using travellers.

Air4All lets wheelchair users clip into position on the aircraft without leaving their chair. This means the user has an elegant solution to getting a seat on the plane, and the airline maintains their seat count.

Meanwhile, an outfit called Revolve Air have pioneered a wheelchair that folds up to about the size of a carry-on bay – small enough to fit in the overhead lockers. Genius. See: ;

Eco-conscious, carbon-neutral travel is top of mind these days.

Coming in 2024, Six Senses’ Svart hotel will be the world’s first energy-positive, off-grid accommodation destination. Looking like a Nordic take on Apple’s famous doughnut-shaped headquarters, this circular hotel is being built out over a fjord in northern Norway.

The proprietors claim it will, eventually, be totally off-grid, with net zero environmental impact and consuming 85% less energy than comparable hotels. Some might question the eco-credentials of besmirching a pristine fjord with a hotel in the first place – and it does rather look like the perfect setting for a noir drama where all that yoga and mindfulness turn sinister – but good on them for throwing down the eco-gauntlet.

With hotels making up around 1% of global carbon emissions, we have to do more than magnanimously restrict our towel use.

The Sani Resort on the Halkidiki Peninsula in Greece was the first in the country to go carbon-neutral, running on 100% renewable energy. It’s also on course to be plastic-free and waste-free by 2024. The 1000 acres of the resort are also home to 225 bird species (with many of them rare and globally endangered) and 272 acres of protected wetlands.

Closer to home, Pumpkin Island off the Great Barrier Reef is said to be the first fully carbon-neutral hotel in Australia. Among a raft of initiatives, the island’s beach cottages are all 100% powered by solar and wind, with filtered rainwater for drinking. See: ; ;

Two companies are leading the charge towards sending you into eco-orbit. Space Perspective’s mission is to limit the environmental impact of space exploration using a capsule called ‘Spaceship Neptune’, essentially a pod suspended beneath a giant balloon about the size of sports stadium (what could possibly go wrong?).

The plan is to carry eight people up to 100,000 feet (30km) for two hours of carbon-neutral space bothering, where you’ll linger above 99% of the Earth’s atmosphere. They’re also offering space weddings, with take-off slated for 2025.

Meanwhile, you can prep right now: a company called Orbite offers four-day space boot camps in Florida for would-be space travellers called ‘astronaut orientation’. The three-day programme includes lots of virtual reality tours and the capper is a zero-gravity flight on a specially modified Boeing 727, where you can experience ‘true weightlessness’ (sick bags will definitely be required). See: ;

Companies like Fora and Origin are hoping to step in over traditional travel agents. With Fora you can access ‘travel advisers’ to collaborate with you on your next trip.

Think the hive mind but populated by people who really know their stuff. And on the other side of the equation, inveterate travellers can become ‘travel agents’ as a side hustle.

With the Origin app, users can team up with an expert travel curator to plan trips. They reckon their tech is a key point of difference, though I suspect generative AI might be coming for them. See:;

Instead of being barricaded away in a resort, this movement is all about integrating into a local community for your stay.

For indigenous communities it’s about having an equal voice in setting the terms of the tourist offering, so everyone in the chain is fairly compensated, whether drivers, guides, cooks or farmers. Like the Pachamama Alliance’s community-based immersion deep in the remote territories of the Ecuadorian Amazon, a trip that supports the indigenous Achuar and Sápara people in protecting their land and culture.

Or the Rancho Pescadero in Mexico, where founder Lisa Harper has built an eco-resort with a focus on giving back to the local Todos Santos community. See: ;

Where travel meets ‘prepping’ – especially for wannabe Lara Crofts and Commando Dans – tourists challenge themselves to survive in inhospitable conditions and learn new skills.

Åsa Lind Chong lived in NZ for several years and now runs wilderness adventuring in sub-zero temperatures in places like Sweden through her company, Escapade.

In Guyana you can spend two weeks in the South American jungle with just the clothes you're wearing, a machete, a bow and arrow, and a belt kit with Fronteering.

England's Woodlore run by bushcraft expert Ray Mears offers three-day courses building campfires, making shelters, tracking animals and understanding the flora and fauna of regional forests. Or still in the UK, travellers can push the ‘survival’ element all the way with zombie experiences where you do battle with the walking dead. See: ; ; ;