International Travel Trends

The future of tourism includes ultra-health-conscious hotels, a surge in river cruises, abundant choices for medical trips—and sky nannies.

Are you looking to get healthy while enjoying a nice getaway? More and more top-flight hotels—ranging from yoga retreat Kamalaya in Thailand to the fitness-oriented Rancho La Puerta in Mexico—are offering wellness expertise alongside the chance to coddle yourself.

Care to take it a step further and actually undergo a medical procedure? The burgeoning field of medical tourism has little or nothing to do with spas and inner peace and everything to do with surgery—albeit surgery in a beautiful destination with hospital accommodations to rival those of a four-star hotel.

Or maybe you’re a traveler who wants to get on the water but has no interest in joining the crowds on behemoth cruise ships. In that case, head for the river, whether you want a modern boat on the Rhine or something more offbeat, like Volga River itineraries on decidedly proletarian Soviet-era ships. One of the newest riverboats is the Mekong Sun, a 28-passenger Laotian-built vessel that follows a formerly inaccessible stretch of the Mekong River from Vientiane, past the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Luang Prabang, and into the Golden Triangle.

Read more: The Hottest New Travel Trends - International Business Times

Technorati Tags: travel trends, international travel, travel, trips, holiday, vacation