The Slow Travel Shift
The Slow Travel Shift:
Why Less Movement Means More Experience
Speed used to be the currency of sophisticated travel. Now the most discerning travelers are doing the opposite — staying longer, moving less, and returning home with something that a whirlwind itinerary cannot produce: the feeling of having actually been somewhere.
Imagine this. It is Tuesday morning in a hill town in Tuscany — not a Tuesday you are passing through on the way to somewhere else, but a Tuesday that simply belongs to you. The market has been running since seven. The butcher knows you by now. You have had the same table at the bar on the corner three mornings in a row, and the owner has stopped handing you a menu. You walked the same road yesterday evening and noticed something you had missed the day before — a carved lintel above a door, a view that only opens up at a particular angle, a dog that sleeps in the same square every afternoon. You are not sightseeing. You are, quietly and without ceremony, living.
This is slow travel. Not a trend, not a retreat from ambition, and not a compromise. It is a philosophy of intentional movement — one that holds that depth of experience and breadth of itinerary are, for the most part, in direct opposition to each other. And in 2026, it has become the defining shift in how the world's most thoughtful travelers approach their journeys.
The numbers are unambiguous. Research from the University of Leeds found that journeys of more than 50 miles account for less than 3% of all trips taken by UK residents — but are responsible for 70% of all passenger travel-related carbon emissions. International flights alone, just 0.4% of total trips, generate 55% of emissions. The implication is stark: the single most effective change a traveler can make is not switching to a reusable water bottle at the airport. It is taking fewer, longer trips.
But slow travel is not a sacrifice dressed up in sustainability language. It is a genuinely superior way to travel — and the evidence for that is just as compelling as the environmental data. A survey of 2,000 Americans found that mental health improvements from travel are significantly amplified by slower, more immersive experiences. The time pressure that turns vacations into their own form of stress — the packed schedule, the missed connection, the sense that you never quite arrived before it was already time to leave — evaporates when the itinerary is designed around depth rather than distance.
what does it actually feel like to be somewhere?
Three principles.
One way of moving through the world.
The slow travel movement grew from the Slow Food movement launched in Italy in 1986 — Carlo Petrini's protest against the opening of a McDonald's near the Spanish Steps in Rome, and his insistence that the pace at which we consume shapes the quality of what we receive. By the late 1990s, the philosophy had migrated from the table to the journey itself. Its core logic is simple: prioritize quality over speed, depth over breadth, presence over documentation.
At LuxeTerre, we interpret slow travel as a philosophy built on three inseparable principles. The first is staying longer in fewer places — resisting the checklist mentality that turns a two-week trip into a relay race across six cities, and instead choosing one or two destinations and giving them the time they deserve. The second is moving between places by lower-carbon means wherever possible: train over plane, ship over flight, road trip over connection. Not as penance, but because the journey by train through the Swiss Alps or along the Italian coast is, by almost any measure, a better experience than a departure gate. The third is immersive local living — eating where residents eat, shopping where residents shop, learning a neighborhood's rhythms rather than photographing its landmarks.
These are not rules. They are orientations. And they require planning — which is precisely where most travelers, even those who deeply want to travel this way, get stuck.
Five slow travel journeys
bookable through LuxeTerre.
Tuscany, Italy — Extended Villa Stay
Tuscany is the archetype of slow travel for good reason — it rewards time in a way that few places do. A week in a single hilltop village yields entirely different returns from a four-day grand tour of Florence, Siena, and San Gimignano. The olive harvest in October, the wildflower-covered Val d'Orcia in May, the rhythm of a market town on a Thursday morning — none of these are available to the traveler moving at speed.
Belmond's Venice Simplon-Orient-Express launched a Paris to Tuscany route in 2025, pairing the legendary rail journey with an extended stay at Castello di Casole — one of the finest estate hotels in Italy, set among 4,200 acres of working Tuscan farmland. For those arriving by high-speed rail from Rome, the journey takes 90 minutes and deposits you directly into the soul of the region. LuxeTerre curates extended stays across a range of Tuscan properties, from intimate agritourismos to restored Renaissance estates, with locally guided itineraries designed around the season.
Japan — Ryokan Circuit by Rail
Japan's rail network is the finest in the world, which makes it one of the most naturally suited countries on earth for slow travel by train. A ryokan circuit — moving between traditional Japanese inns in Kyoto, Hakone, Kanazawa, and the Izu Peninsula — covers remarkable cultural and geographic ground while keeping the pace deliberately unhurried. Each ryokan demands a certain slowness by design: the kaiseki dinner is a multi-hour event, the onsen ritual has its own protocols, the tatami room and its absence of furniture invites a particular quality of stillness.
Japan's JR Group also operates its extraordinary Joyful Trains — specialist tourism trains including dining cars, observation cars, and the Shiki-Shima, a five-star sleeper train that operates in limited departures through Japan's most remote and beautiful landscapes. A slow travel itinerary in Japan is not a compromise on experience. It is an amplification of everything that makes Japan extraordinary — and it produces a fraction of the carbon footprint of a multi-flight Asian tour.
Provence, France — One Region, Fully Lived
Provence is a region that has been photographed so extensively that it can feel, in anticipation, slightly exhausted by its own beauty. Arriving slowly — by TGV from Paris, followed by a rental car or private transfer into the Luberon — and staying in one village for ten days is the antidote to that exhaustion. The lavender doesn't bloom on a schedule calibrated to your departure date. The light in the late afternoon is different from the light at midday in a way that takes more than one day to notice. The Tuesday market in Apt and the Saturday market in Aix-en-Provence are not interchangeable; each has its own character, its own vendors, its own pace.
A slow travel Provence itinerary built by LuxeTerre centers on a single base property — a mas, a bastide, or a village house — with day excursions rather than nightly relocations. Les Bateaux Belmond, which operates a fleet of floating villas along the rivers and canals of Provence, offers another dimension: the Rhône and the Canal du Midi traveled at a walking pace, with stops determined by appetite and curiosity rather than a fixed timetable.
England & Wales — Britannic Explorer Sleeper Train
Belmond launched the Britannic Explorer in July 2025 — the first luxury sleeper train in England and Wales, and one of the most genuinely compelling new slow travel products in years. Three-night and six-night itineraries depart from London and wind through Cornwall's dramatic coastline, the Lake District's fells, and the wild landscapes of Wales, with off-train excursions — open-water swimming on Derwentwater, exclusive access to historic estates, hikes through national parks — curated by Belmond and executed by local experts.
Dining is overseen by Michelin-starred chef Simon Rogan, whose farm-to-fork philosophy is among the most rigorous in British gastronomy. The train itself — 18 cabins across Suites and Grand Suites, a wellness suite, two restaurant cars, and an observation bar — makes the argument that the most elegant way to see Britain is from a moving window at night, waking to a landscape you chose to be inside rather than to photograph from outside. This is slow travel at its most elevated.
Croatia — Island Hopping by Private Sail
Croatia's Dalmatian coast — Hvar, Korčula, Vis, Brač — is one of the great arguments for slow travel by sea. Each island has a distinct character, a distinct cuisine, and a distinct rhythm, and the ferry connections between them are frequent enough that there is no pressure to rush. A private sailing charter takes this further: the itinerary is yours, the pace is yours, and the hidden coves accessible only by water are yours in a way they can never be from a tour bus or a fast ferry.
A week on the Adriatic by sail reduces your transport carbon footprint to near zero, immerses you in a culture that is genuinely different from the Croatian mainland experience, and produces the particular quality of relaxation that comes from having no fixed schedule beyond the wind and the tide. LuxeTerre curates both crewed charter experiences and guided sailing itineraries across the Dalmatian islands, with accommodation ranging from private villas on arrival to boutique hotels in the old towns of Hvar and Korčula.
The world has not gotten smaller.
We have just been moving through it too fast to notice.
The case for slow travel is both environmental and deeply personal. It asks nothing of you that a well-planned itinerary cannot deliver — and it returns things that no itinerary, however well-planned, can manufacture: the sensation of belonging somewhere for long enough to have a routine, the particular knowledge that comes from returning to the same place twice, the memory of a Tuesday morning that felt like it belonged to you.
The practical objection is always time. But slow travel does not require more time — it requires different time. One trip of fourteen days to a single destination uses the same annual leave as two trips of seven days to six countries. The question is not whether you have the time. The question is what you want to come home with.
LuxeTerre Travel, powered by FORA, specializes in exactly this kind of itinerary: deeply considered, unhurried, and built around your specific definition of what it means to travel well. We do not sell packages. We curate journeys. And we believe the best ones are the ones that feel, by the end, like they could have gone on a little longer.
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