Every year, Tripadvisor publishes its Trendcast — a forward-looking analysis of traveler behavior drawn from millions of bookings, reviews, and forum conversations across its global platform. It is one of the most data-rich documents in travel, and the 2026 edition contains signals that every Chiang Mai business owner in hospitality, F&B, retail, and experiences should read carefully.
The headline finding is not subtle: experience has displaced destination as the primary driver of travel decisions. Travelers are not choosing a place and then looking for something to do. They are choosing an experience — a specific kind of activity, connection, or discovery — and the destination is where that experience happens to be located.
For Chiang Mai, this is not bad news. It is, depending on your business and how you position it, a significant opportunity.
Here is what the report says, what the data behind it shows, and what it means in practical terms for businesses operating in this city.
The Visitor Base Is Shifting — and Growing
Before getting into the trends themselves, it is worth understanding the state of the market Chiang Mai is operating in.
In 2024, South Korea became one of Chiang Mai’s top two inbound markets, with 283,681 arrivals closing rapidly on the Chinese market’s 326,651. South Korean arrivals recorded 50% growth compared to 2023, and by early 2025 Korean tourists had overtaken Chinese arrivals through Chiang Mai International Airport on a monthly basis. Searches from Japanese and Indian guests increased by around 90%, and Australian searches grew by over 80% for future Chiang Mai trips. These are markets with high per-trip spend, strong interest in cultural and culinary experiences, and a growing awareness of Chiang Mai as a destination beyond temples and trekking.
While Bangkok and Phuket saw slowing revenue growth in 2025 due to saturation and price competition, Northern Thailand recorded double-digit revenue growth, driven by cultural tourism and digital nomads seeking value. The data is pointing north. Chiang Mai is in a favorable position relative to Thailand’s other major tourism centers, and the Trendcast trends align well with what the city already offers.
Trend 1: Investigative Drinking — the Opportunity for F&B and Experience Operators
The Trendcast identifies a global shift away from branded bars and recognizable labels toward hyper-regional, artisan-at-source drinking experiences. Experience bookings for regional spirits rose 36% year on year in Mexico. Matcha bookings in Japan are up 280%. The trend spans wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and zero-proof alternatives.
Chiang Mai is, quietly, one of Southeast Asia’s most interesting drinking destinations — it just has not been marketed that way.
Chiang Mai’s coffee scene is one of only a few in the world where progressive roasters and café owners operate within an hour’s drive of the highland farms where the beans are grown, creating constant exchange between production and consumption.
Thailand’s specialty coffee market has grown 15 to 20% annually, and Chiang Mai province alone produces over 3,200 tonnes of Arabica beans per year. Single-origin Geisha. Award-winning honey-process and washed beans. Farm-to-cup roasteries within the city limits.
Then there is wine. Thailand’s northern highlands sit at 300 to 600 metres above sea level with harvest-season temperatures between 10 and 25 degrees Celsius — conditions that suit Shiraz, Tempranillo, and emerging varietals. Vineyards in the Mae On hills are producing wines, gins, vodkas, and craft beers that belong in the same conversation as other emerging New Latitude wine regions. Thailand’s 2024 wine tariff cuts from 54% down to standard rates have accelerated the development of a genuine wine culture, creating a market more receptive to regional producers than at any previous point.
And Chiang Mai’s craft chocolate scene is growing rapidly, with a number of micro-factories and artisan producers working with locally grown single-origin cacao following the same trajectory as specialty coffee a decade ago.
What this means for your business: If you operate a café, roastery, bar, tasting room, or experience involving any of these products, the traveler segment that is growing fastest globally is looking for exactly what you make. The question is not whether there is demand — the Trendcast confirms there is. The question is whether your marketing communicates provenance, process, and place clearly enough for that traveler to find you and choose you.
Trend 2: Future Foodists — the Opportunity for Restaurants and Food Experiences
The Trendcast’s Future Foodists trend describes travelers who plan entire trips around culinary ecosystems — not just good restaurants, but the food systems that sustain them. Farm-to-table is the floor, not the ceiling. They want to understand where ingredients come from and who is keeping those traditions alive.
Chiang Mai has an exceptional foundation here. Northern Thailand dominates Thailand’s culinary tourism market, holding approximately 35% of national market share, driven by the region’s distinctive Lanna cuisine and Chiang Mai’s status as a destination for serious food travelers. Thailand’s culinary tourism sector was valued at USD 32.5 billion in 2024, with growth projected to USD 39.4 billion by 2034.
Khao soi. Sai oua. Nam prik ong. These are not just menu items — they are regional identifiers, dishes that exist in their most authentic form here in the north, and that represent exactly the kind of culinary specificity the Future Foodists traveler is seeking. Agoda’s 2026 Travel Outlook Report identifies food as increasingly the primary reason people choose their travel destinations, with Chiang Mai named among Asia’s top foodie destinations.
Tripadvisor’s own data shows street food tour bookings up 36% and culinary and gourmet tour bookings up 25% since 2023. Heritage market bookings are surging. The cooking class market is not slowing down.
What this means for your business: Restaurants and food experience operators who can tell the story of their ingredients — where the pork for the sai oua comes from, who grows the chillies, what makes the spice blend specific to this kitchen — are serving the 2026 traveler directly. This is not about adding a page to your website. It is about building the story into the experience itself, and making sure that story is visible in the places where travelers research before they book.
Trend 3: Thrill of the Find — the Opportunity for Artisan Retail and Makers
The Trendcast records vintage discovery shopping tour bookings up 60%, hands-on local workshop bookings up 52%, and craft class bookings up 75% year on year. The underlying driver is straightforward: travelers are rejecting mass-produced souvenirs and seeking things that are genuinely from the place, made by the people who live there, and ideally something they participated in making themselves.
Chiang Mai has one of Southeast Asia’s most established artisan communities. Silver crafting families on Wua Lai Road have worked the same techniques for generations. The Sunday Walking Street fills Ratchadamnoen Road with handwoven textiles, ceramics, lacquerware, and craft goods every week. New creative spaces like Kalm Village in the Old Town are building dedicated infrastructure for makers, with residency programs, exhibitions, and workshops that put artisans in direct contact with visitors.
The Trendcast is not describing something Chiang Mai needs to build. It is describing something Chiang Mai already has. The gap — for many businesses — is in how effectively they surface the story behind what they sell, and how discoverable their products and workshops are to travelers who are specifically looking for them.
What this means for your business: If you make things by hand, offer workshops, or sell goods with genuine local provenance, the 2026 traveler is your customer. Visibility is the primary challenge. Google Business Profile listings with accurate categories, photos of the making process, and responses to reviews are the minimum. Booking-enabled listings on platforms like Viator and Airbnb Experiences put you in front of travelers at the moment they are planning — the moment that drives the bookings Tripadvisor is measuring.
Trend 4: Humanized Hospitality — the Opportunity for Hotels, Guesthouses, and Service Businesses
The Trendcast records a 38% year-on-year increase in experience bookings that specifically involve local guides or hosts. Reviews that call out a local guide or host positively are up 20%. The trend is clear: travelers want to feel known by the place they are visiting, and they are actively seeking out businesses and experiences where a human being is central to the encounter.
This is a structural advantage for smaller businesses. A 10-room guesthouse can know every guest by name. A family-run cooking school can tell the story of where the recipe came from and who taught it. A local guide can take a traveler somewhere their algorithm would never suggest.
Chiang Mai is increasingly recognized as a destination where the human-scale encounter — the temple conversation, the market discovery, the cooking class host who remembers you ordered without chili last time — is still available and genuinely felt.
The Trendcast notes that AI is quietly enabling this trend rather than replacing it — translation tools that allow deeper conversation with local artisans, personalization systems that help small hotel teams know what guests need before they ask. The technology serves the human connection; it does not substitute for it.
What this means for your business: The personality of your business — who you are, what you know, why you do this — is a competitive asset. For smaller operators in Chiang Mai, this means leaning into what the large hotels and international chains cannot replicate. The personal detail. The local knowledge. The recommendation that is genuinely yours. Make sure it is visible: in your Google listing, in your social content, in the way you communicate with guests before and after their visit.
Trend 5: Flex-Lux — the Opportunity for Upmarket Day Experiences
One of the Trendcast’s most commercially interesting findings is the 80% year-on-year increase in bookings for day passes to hotels, resorts, and beach clubs. The underlying behavior is a growing market for travelers who want access to high-quality experiences — a beautiful pool, a well-run spa, a fine dining lunch — without committing to an overnight stay.
This translates directly to day-use packages, standalone dining experiences, afternoon spa bookings, and premium drinks experiences at properties that would otherwise only count guests as overnight visitors. Chiang Mai is one of Thailand’s top five MICE cities, with a hospitality infrastructure ranging from boutique guesthouses to upmarket resorts that serves a broad visitor and resident base. The day-use and premium experience market is underdeveloped relative to what the demand data suggests.
What this means for your business: If you operate a property with a pool, spa, restaurant, or outdoor space, consider what a well-priced day package looks like. The demand exists. The question is whether you have a product structured to capture it and a listing that makes it bookable.
Trend 6: The Digital Nomad Layer
This is not one of the Trendcast’s 10 named trends, but it sits underneath several of them and is too significant for Chiang Mai businesses to ignore.
Over the past decade, Chiang Mai has transformed from a relaxed mountain city into one of the world’s top destinations for digital nomads, drawing remote workers, freelancers, tech entrepreneurs, and creatives who value affordability, community, and quality of life. The Nomad Summit, which originated in Chiang Mai in 2015, continues to draw the global remote work community to the city annually.
This population is relevant to the Trendcast because digital nomads staying for weeks or months behave like both residents and travelers. They eat out daily. They book experiences. They seek the things the Trendcast describes — the local guide, the craft class, the artisan market, the good coffee. And they generate reviews, social content, and word-of-mouth that reaches exactly the kind of traveler every business in this city wants to attract.
Chiang Mai’s digital nomad community represents a segment that values intentional, experience-led living — people who chose this city specifically because it offers more than productivity, and who actively seek out the human-scale encounters, cultural depth, and artisan quality that the Trendcast identifies as the defining travel priorities of 2026.
The Core Takeaway for Chiang Mai Businesses
The Trendcast’s data is global, but its implications for this city are specific. Chiang Mai already has most of what the 2026 traveler is looking for: artisan producers, genuine culinary heritage, human-scale hospitality, a growing drinks and food culture built on local provenance, and a visitor base that is actively diversifying toward experience-seeking markets.
The gap, for most businesses, is not in the product. It is in visibility and narrative. Travelers cannot book an experience they cannot find. They cannot choose a business whose story is invisible. And they cannot justify a premium for provenance they have never been told about.
The businesses that will benefit most from the trends the Trendcast describes are the ones that take the next step: making sure their story is told, their listings are complete and current, and their experience is presented in terms that the 2026 traveler is already searching for.
CMBN’s Golden Pages directory exists precisely to address the visibility challenge for local businesses. If your listing is not there, or not up to date, this is the week to fix it.
