Why millennial luxury travellers are harder to please - and how the industry is rising to the challenge

Travel has been forced to change. In the past, the glamour of travel had everything to do with the luxury of getting onto a private plane and heading anywhere in the world to satisfy our hunger for discovery and adventure.

Today's jaded travellers are harder to please. This generation needs financial and time investment to be justified, and savvy companies are quickly responding to the changing tides, offering new value through pre and post experiences and a host of lifestyle services - and for the more enterprising brands, it can go way beyond these elements, to personalised apps, customised travel pods and more.

"Travel now meets you in the spaces you congregate in and is, in fact, empathetic," says Tom Marchant who owns the innovative travel company Black Tomato.

Instead of just offering a range of packages for their clients to choose from, what Black Tomato aims to show is that they can cater to and address the feelings that every single traveller experiences - from the initial thrill to anxiety and everything in-between.

These new considerations have everything to do with the shifting demographic of today's travellers. This new generation, call them millennials if you will, is, according to a Boston Consulting Group report, defined as between the ages of 16 and 34 and is interested in travel abroad than older generation by a 23 per cent margin. The United Nations even states that nearly 200 million travellers are young people and will generate US$180 billion in annual tourism revenue. To truly push the boundaries of travel for this generation, companies now have to offer something much more intangible that travellers can truly feel. This process starts at the very beginning - the anticipatory thrill of a new adventure.

"Half of the fun of travel is the anticipation. As a travel company it's our job to tap into that and also use that process to get people adequately prepared," Marchant says. What he and his team do at this early stage, for example, is begin the proceedings with an "arts of travel" kit, which can include everything from relevant literature to music inspired by the destination to get the traveller excited and in the pre-adventure frame of mind. This crucial step is mirrored at the end, when they follow up with 'back to reality' kits to greet travellers when they return.

Easing travellers into and out of their holidays is clearly a key part of a successful trip according to Black Tomato, and the company is taking this a cyber step further with an app based on the "internet of things". This allows the user to control a house's heating, booking of cabs, music playing for back home - all consolidated in an app. "So while lying on the beach the day before they board their flight, or in the taxi on the way to the airport they can create a far more welcoming environment to return to, and avoid as best they can, the 'back to reality blues' feeling," Marchant says.