Time for a nostalgication

Nostalgic holidays boom takes travellers back to 1990s and beyond.

When I was a kid, travel meant sleeping in the annex of my grandparents’ caravan, pooling coins for icy poles, and fishing for bream off the jetty.

No overwater villas at manicured camping “resorts”. Queuing at the airport? Forget it. If we went anywhere, it was in the car with a bag of Allen’s Snakes between my brother and me, and Billy Joel or Fleetwood Mac turned up high.

A handful of grainy photos capture other travel memories from childhood – timestamps from a diving trip (for Dad) to Lady Elliot Island, a school exchange to Japan, and the time we sailed around the Whitsundays for a week and shucked oysters off the rocks. Without quite realising it, I’ve harboured a soft spot for those destinations my entire adult life and now with young kids of my own, they’re just three of the travel experiences I hope to recreate for them.

It’s not just me. A new wave of nostalgia is sweeping itineraries as travellers press replay on fond memories. Travel software company Amadeus and forecasting agency Globetrender call the trend “new heydays”, and as a millennial staring down the barrel of middle age, I’m the core demographic. Recent research from Hilton also found 58 per cent of travellers with kids will revisit destinations from their own childhood this year. “Recreating memories” is the motivation, but could it be deeper than that?

My sense is we’re yearning for simpler times. Pre-social media times. When a holiday felt like an escape, not a quest to be seen in the hottest spots. We’re seeking wholesome joy – the kind that comes from low-key camping spots, old modes of transport (like Hire a Kombi on the Great Ocean Road), and analogue activities – bike rides and board games, anyone? Amadeus and Globetrender call this “rosy retrospection”.

>This story first appeared in Escape, 9 March 2025. Continue reading on the PDF or online here.