The longest-running tour operator in North America, Collette, knows a thing or two about where travel is headed—and when the company flags a trend, it’s worth paying attention. For 2026, the family-owned and -operated company highlights key trends you should keep an eye on, including solo adventures, historical and cultural immersion, food as experience, travel that gives back and small group travel.
Small group travel in particular is gaining momentum, Collette’s President and CEO Jaclyn Leibl-Cote tells Recommend. With the launch of Collette’s latest Explorations brochure focused on small group itineraries, we spoke with Leibl-Cote about the growing demand for deeper destination engagement.
“We’ve had small group [tours] since 2008, so it’s not new to us, but it’s really surged and we’ve really put a lot of effort behind it,” says Leibl-Cote. Small group tours, she says, use smaller vehicles that allow access to more off-the-beaten-path spots, adding, “for the hotel accommodations, [it’s about] trying to find the local family-owned villa. [For example], on one of these family-owned accommodations that we use on the Italy’s Treasures tour, we were in the kitchen, making pizza with [the family]. It just allows you to have different connections and meaningful experiences because you’re not with a larger group,” she says.
She acknowledges that because it’s a premium tour, it might be a bit more costly, “but the experience also outweighs itself there too.” And take note, because when Collette says small group, they are looking at an average of 16 to 18 per group.
Leible-Cote adds that although advisors are used to Collette’s Classic product, “the more that they’re getting their travelers coming back from small group [experiences], we’re going to continue to see that adoption over to that side.”
She comments, too, that there are people who initially aren’t interested in guided travel at all, but “then you get these stories where, ‘I didn’t think I was going to like it, but I made friends for a lifetime.’”
For clients looking for Small Group Explorations tours, Collette’s most popular are the 25-day Cape Town to Cairo: The Ultimate African Experience; the 11-day Countryside of the Emerald Isle; and the 7-day Alaska’s Northern Lights (for the latter, think a wintertime escape in the 49th state when there’s less tourism traffic).
Leible-Cote says that as Collette has expanded its Explorations product line, they’ve seen an uptick in interest in Asia and Africa, which, she notes, are great for multigenerational groups.
“I traveled [to Africa] with my family, my in-laws, my nieces and nephews, so you had three generations and you could sit at the dinner table at the end of each day and just talk about how amazing [the day] was,” she says. One recommendation is Collette’s 14-day Plains of Africa, which travels to Kenya for an African safari adventure.
One of the destinations that’s on Leible-Cote’s “hidden gems” list is Peru, whose food, she says, is “spectacular.” Think: “food as experience,” and recommend Collette’s 10-day Peru: Machu Picchu and Lake Titicaca, which includes a culinary demonstration at the host hotel at the base of Machu Picchu, a farm-to-table lunch with a local Quechua community and a home-hosted meal on Lake Titicaca.
Collette, Leible-Cote says, is always looking at ways to perfect the product for the next wave of travelers. Essential to this is “listening to travelers, because they are telling us exactly what they like and what they don’t like.” Among the things travelers didn’t want, she notes, was “experiencing destinations sitting on a coach.” She also says “listening to the pulse on the ground with the tour managers, what they’re seeing” is crucial as well. “Because they see it every single day.”
And this 108-year-old company, she says, is squarely focused on guided tours. “We don’t own hotels intentionally. We don’t own river ships intentionally. We don’t own motor coaches. That’s all intentional. We are focused on guided touring and so we want to make sure that we are the best at what we do because it’s our everything,” she stresses.
Part of their success is due, in part, to their strong partnership with travel advisors, who are “critical.” But she also reminds travel advisors to “sift through the noise” in order to make the best choice for their clients. “[Advisors] need to understand what they’re really getting for the value of money, for the value of experience, because they’re not cheap places to go to in many cases. If it’s experience driven, I would say take a look at what we’re doing, especially in the small group space, because we’re doing it differently.”
