It’s only the second official day of fall, and already Google searches for “best beach resorts 2025” are down 65%. Travelers, it seems, aren’t itching for a shoulder-season escape to sand and sun. They are still traveling, just…differently.
A new analysis of Google Trends data from iGaming affiliate Gamblizard shows just how differently. Among the findings:
- Tombstone tours up +428%, drawing visitors to world-famous cemeteries
- Hair transplant vacations up +267%, often packaged with flights, hotels and surgery
- Plastic surgery trips up +145%, with hotspots in South Korea, Thailand, Brazil, Mexico and India
- Gambling cruises up +136%, offering floating casinos for travelers from places with strict land-based laws
- Storm-chasing tours up +114% for hurricanes and +21% for tornadoes
- Men-only retreats up +84%, with fitness, wellness and “reset” programs ranging from $700–$4,000
There’s a lot to unpack here. Tombstone tourism, for one, spiking more than 400%? “Graveyards are trending,” the report notes, pointing to sites like Père Lachaise in Paris, Hollywood Forever in Los Angeles, La Recoleta in Buenos Aires and the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague. Visitors are chasing epitaphs, gravestone rubbings and the stories of famous deaths.
Technically, this falls under dark tourism. As The Washington Post explains, the term — coined in 1996 — describes trips to sites tied to some of history’s bleakest events: genocide, assassination, war, disaster. Think Auschwitz-Birkenau, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the 9/11 Memorial. In that broader context, wandering through a cemetery on a sunny afternoon feels almost wholesome.
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Medical tourism is also on the rise. Plastic surgery trips and hair transplant getaways aren’t new, but the fact that they’re now trending alongside storm-chasing tours suggests something bigger: travel is becoming less about lounging and more about doing something unusual, extreme or transformational.
Not all of it is cause for concern. Gambling cruises may raise eyebrows, but the rise of men-only retreats is arguably overdue. Historically, women have traveled more than men — and women-only trips are widely accepted as normal, even necessary. Men-only travel, however, has carried a different connotation. These newer versions aren’t the cigar-smoke-and-shotgun weekends of yore. They’re focused on wellness: fitness programs, hiking, meditation, mental resets with psychedelics and, perhaps most importantly, spaces where men can actually talk about their emotions without judgment.
So yes, if fall Google search trends are to be believed, travel is getting weirder, more niche and a lot more purpose-driven. But that’s hardly a bad thing — in fact, it might be exactly what travel needs. After all, chasing tornadoes or finding your soul in the woods sounds a lot more memorable than another week at a cookie-cutter beach resort.
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