Forget the marble lobbies and the perfectly pressed sheets. The most sought-after travel experience right now involves mud on your boots, dinner cooked over a fire, and sleeping so deeply you forget what a notification sounds like. 

Something is shifting in the way we travel, a rethinking of what makes a trip worth taking. For a long time, premium hospitality was the hotel that impressed us with chocolate on the pillow and ultimately removing friction. 

What we are seeing now, across Europe and beyond, is a growing appetite for what Harrison Hide from Longlane called ‘barefoot luxury’. It puts you inside nature rather than beside it, in an experience that is unpolished, a tad bit inconvenient even, but most importantly exciting.

“People are overstimulated and burned out. What they want are real, vulnerable, intimate experiences.”

— Scott Berman, founder of Sky Cave Retreats, Oregon (two-year waiting list)

The body knows before the mind does

There is a reason that leadership teams stepping out of a boardroom and into the trees tend to go quiet for the first half hour. The nervous system begins settling almost immediately in natural settings. Researchers have spent the last decade documenting how forest bathing, outdoor movement, and time away from screens affect everything from cortisol levels to sleep quality to how clearly we think. Nature is actually one of the best doctors out there (and no lines to get an appointment). Senior leaders are often trapped in highly curated, homogeneous environments—same whiteboards, same chairs, same people.  Nature-based, slightly uncomfortable settings break that loop. Physical effort, unfamiliar environments, and unstructured time create cognitive diversity which is a key ingredient in strategic insight. 

The wellness world has known this for years, but now hospitality is catching up, redesigning premium travel around slowing down in nature too: 

• 94% of travelers say unexpected moments make a place more memorable (Designhotels, further, 2025)
• 88% believe travel has the power to genuinely change or grow you as a person (Designhotels, further, 2025)
• Searches for “digital detox retreat” rose 61% year-on-year. (Hilton Trends Report 2026)

The gap nobody filled, until now

For a while there were two options. You could go full luxury — the kind of resort where everything is taken care of, the price is eye-watering, and nature is mostly a view from your window. Or you could go properly off-grid, which asked for a level of hardship few people want on a ten-day break. The middle ground sat strangely empty.

That gap is filling fast. Farm Fitness, bushcamp-style food ventures from Public House Group, Long Lane, and community-driven retreats like Nook Society‘s lake house outside Berlin are all pointing in the same direction: premium and health-forward, grounded in real food, physical exertion, and connection with other people and the land itself.

What these places share is a philosophy where discomfort becomes part of the draw. The moment you get mud on your hands planting something, your legs ache after a long trail, or you have a real conversation with a stranger over a fire — that is the whole experience. The host’s job shifts from removing every obstacle to creating the conditions for something memorable to happen.

“Truly memorable experiences are no longer about erasing friction,  they are about how we come together.”

Who is actually going?

Younger travellers are folding their wellness habits directly into travel — the weekend trail run has become the weekend trail run somewhere beautiful, with people who care about the same things. Strava’s 2024 data showing a 9% rise in marathon participation is one small sign of a bigger shift: movement has become something people do with intention and pride.

At the other end, burnt-out professionals and senior executives are discovering that two days in the forest can do more than two weeks in a five-star city hotel. Sky Cave Retreats in Oregon — two-year waiting list, clientele including professional athletes and tech founders — is the extreme end, but it points to real demand. When people who can afford anything choose to sleep in a cave in the woods, you pay attention.

More human, more memorable

Academic interest in this field has grown sharply since 2015, keeping pace with the industry itself. Health-oriented tourism (travel with a genuine focus on improving how you feel physically, mentally and socially) has moved from a niche pursuit to something researchers, investors and hospitality designers are taking seriously. The activities at the heart of it are not complicated: forest bathing, hiking, meditation in quiet outdoor settings, growing and preparing food. What they share is that they use natural environments as the setting for something that changes people.

So as the May sunshine stretches the evenings and the urge to get away builds, it might be worth asking a slightly different question than usual. Not just where do I want to go, but how do I want to feel when I come back. Rested, yes, but maybe also a little more connected and present. Boots still slightly muddy… maybe.