Trends & Artefacts: skillcation edition
In this week’s edition of Trends & Artefacts, we round up the snackable trends, stats and insights from around the world, including:
Snail Mail Is Becoming a Serious Side Income
Travellers Prioritise Experiences Over Things
Adult Summer Camps Arrive in Europe
Explainer: Skillcation
Tinned Fish Becomes an Affordable Luxury
Snail Mail Is Becoming a Serious Side Income
Snail mail is becoming a serious side income. Creators are launching monthly mail subscriptions, with Texas-based Hannah Gustafson's recipe and letter mailer pulling in $45k+ in January alone. Driven by digital fatigue and a Gen Z appetite for physical media, these hand-curated envelopes tap into something screens can't replicate. If people are paying a premium to slow down, what does that signal for how we think about attention as a scarce resource?
Travellers Prioritise Experiences Over Things
Economic uncertainty isn't grounding younger travellers. Klook's 2026 Travel Pulse, surveying 11,000 consumers globally, finds 88% plan to increase or maintain travel budgets, with APAC travellers twice as likely as Europeans or Americans to spend more on experiences over shopping. Two-thirds now plan multi-destination trips, using major cities as gateways rather than endpoints. If discovery is becoming the product, how should destinations rethink what they're actually selling?
Adult Summer Camps Arrive in Europe
Summer camps for grown-ups are expanding beyond the US, with operators like EF Ultimate Break and Camp Château launching structured, activity-based experiences in the Swiss Alps and French countryside for Gen Z and Millennials. Camp Château sold out for 2025 within five days of a single social media post, leaving 11,000 on the waiting list. When nostalgia and the struggle to make friends in person become a viable premium market, what does that say about what daily adult life is currently failing to provide?
Explainer: Skillcation
The "skillcation", a trip structured around learning a tangible new skill, is emerging as a distinct travel category, with offerings ranging from cattle drives in Arizona and fly fishing in Montana to banana winemaking in Rwanda and regenerative farming in South Africa. It sits at the intersection of experiential travel, personal development, and the growing demand for meaningful return on time spent. If coming home with a skill is becoming part of what justifies the trip, how should destinations and hotels rethink what they're actually selling?
Tinned Fish Becomes an Affordable Luxury
Sardines have gone from pantry staple to cultural moment, with Americans spending $3.52 billion on shelf-stable seafood in the past year and online conversation around tinned fish up 30% year on year. Premium brands, aesthetic packaging, and a protein-obsessed, sustainability-aware generation have transformed a $2 can into an aspirational food choice. When affordability and effortful taste converge in a single product, what does that reveal about how younger consumers are redefining what luxury actually means?
