Fewer departures, but stays of twenty-two days and long-haul accounting for nearly half of tickets. Trip.com’s data for France sketches a premium traveller younger than average, who is redefining the codes of luxury in travel.
A premium traveller who is getting younger
Luxury travel was imagined as the business of established generations. The figures from the Trip.com platform, published on 29 September 2026, tell another story. Under-35s account for 40.3% of mainland French travellers who booked a first-class or business-class flight for the second half of 2026, and 41.0% of those who booked a five-star hotel. Across Trip.com as a whole, these shares are 28.5% and 32.0%.
The 35-49s remain the largest age band taken on its own. But France stands out for the weight of its younger generations: the 18-34s account for around four premium bookings in ten, in air travel as in five-star hotels. Among the 18-24s, the share observed in France is almost twice that recorded across the whole platform.
Trip.com reads this as a generational change: travellers nourished by social media, seeking experiences to live as much as to share, less attached to outward signs of wealth and more to stays conceived as experiences in their own right.
Less often, longer, further
This clientele travels differently. For the second half of 2026, French customers who booked a premium flight average 1.43 trips, against 1.62 across Trip.com. Their stays, however, last 22.7 days, which is 8.3 days more than the platform average of 14.4 days.
Long-haul accounts for 45.8% of their premium flight bookings. Asia tops the ranking of long-haul routes booked from France: Paris-Tokyo comes first, ahead of Paris-Bangkok, Paris-Kuala Lumpur, Paris-Seoul and Paris-Bali.
Five destinations, five reasons
These destinations do not appeal for the same reasons, the study specifies. Tokyo benefits from a strong enthusiasm for Japanese culture, reinforced by a yen favourable to foreign visitors. Bangkok combines expanded air service and an upscale hotel offering in the midst of renewal. Bali, the only island destination in the ranking, adds a resort dimension: it is chosen as much for its beaches as for the island’s interior, its temples, its rice fields and an upscale offering oriented towards wellbeing.
By implication, this ranking suggests a luxury measured in time spent and distance travelled rather than in frequency of departures. Leaving less often also means leaving better prepared, and staying long enough for the place to stop being an address.
Searches taking off
Interest precedes booking. In the first half of 2026, searches for first-class or business-class flights rose 110% year on year in France. Searches for five-star hotels rose 97%, against 57% across Trip.com. The Platinum Luxury Hotels selection confirms this appetite: its bookings made from France rose 176% year on year in the first half, against 45% across the platform.
On the booked destinations side, mainland China comes first, ahead of Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, Japan, Indonesia and Singapore. France ranks seventh, ahead of Türkiye, Vietnam and the Maldives.
A reading to qualify
These results should be read with caution, and Trip.com says so itself. Premium travel there covers first-class or business-class flights and five-star hotels. The data cover the first half of 2026 and trips planned for the second, as at August 2026, and concern mainland France only. They reflect activity observed on the platform, not the French market as a whole; they may also be influenced by seasonality, product availability or changes in booking behaviour.
It nevertheless remains a signal. If luxury in travel is increasingly combined with long durations and distant horizons, the question facing hospitality houses is no longer only that of service, but of the time they know how to offer.
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