A decade from now the richest of us will be journeying into space to get away from it all, while the rest of us holiday underwater and travel to newly accessible countries in a bid to be the last person to see a species before it goes extinct, according to a newly released report by Skyscanner.

The report, which is the third on the subject by the travel comparison company, also predicts that the hotel rooms of the future will be kitted out with a slew of gadgets to provide a more tailored travel experience.

We won’t all be staying in hotels though – we’ll see a big rise in the number of us staying in other people’s houses as a way of saving money.

The already established divide between ultra luxury travel and holidays for the masses will be further exaggerated with the rise of holidays to space.

While a decade from now the vast majority of us will only be able to afford such a trip via a lottery win, the very wealthy will be taking trips to into orbit in much the same way that they currently rent private tropical islands.

It is thought that space travel will become within reach of the masses eventually, but that this will take longer than a decade, as futurist Daniel Burrus explained:

“‘Looking beyond the 10-year mark, we will be able to book more affordable trips into space where we can go up there and stay up long enough to enjoy and savour an exciting, alien environment.”

Skyscanner CEO Gareth Williams also argued that truly affordable space travel is a fair way off:

“I suspect we’ll see the habitation of Mars and the ambitions of Mars One or Elon Musk’s vision coming to fruition before space travel becomes common enough and cheap enough to be affordable for the majority.”

However, for space nerds who can’t afford the cost, hotels that provide a space-like environment, including zero-gravity spas, will be a popular niche destination by 2024.

Underwater hotels, however, will move from luxury niche to common destination, particularly as they provide a similar sense of mystery and exploration to space travel, but with a much lower price tag.

One hotel in particular is the Water Discus Hotel in Dubai; set for a 2015 opening, it will sit nine meters below sea level so that visitors will be able to view the local sea life from their suites. It also features the futuristic ability to rotate and rise to above water in an emergency.

Clearly this isn’t going to be affordable if you’re on a hostel budget, but for honeymoons and other big trips it is likely to be extremely popular.

“I suspect that mass underwater exploration and tourism will develop with greater pace than mass space tourism,” added Williams. “And I suspect you would get more from it, because there is more to see down there than in space.”

The top trips of 2024 are going to be to regions that previously were unsafe to visit, with the most hipster of travellers seeking out newly opened “Forbidden Zones” in a bid to get away from crowds.

“There will be a flood of Chinese tourists to the classic destinations such as Paris, Rome and New York in the 2020s, said Burrus.

“Many people will turn away from these classic places because they are so crowded and use their e-agent devices to seek out hidden jewels that the mass market doesn’t yet know about.”

Among the top hidden gems expected to see a surge of new visitors are Afghanistan, North Korea and Iran due to their current status as no-go areas. Botswana and Angola are also set to be popular, and Lebanon is expected to replace Dubai as the top Middle Eastern destination.

“Last” travel is also expected to surge in popularity, with people trying to become the last person to see a species before it becomes extinct.

“In the past, the motivation to ‘be the first’ facilitated a rush to exotic destinations. But in a rapidly changing world, the rush to be one of the ‘last’ is the new travel phenomenon,” explained s Raynald Harvey Lemelin, co-editor of Last Chance Tourism: Adapting Tourism Opportunities in a Changing World.

We’re already seeing this with polar bears, however Skyscanner predicts this will expand to a variety of primates, including bare-faced tamarins and the Sumatran orang-utan, sheath-tailed bats, hairy-nosed wombats and Iberian lynxes.

As a result, safaris will be a vital way of keeping the cash to protect these creatures from poachers – a rather double-edged sword that could cause further problems and even increase the rate of extinction.

For many of us, the travel experience won’t be hotels, but at other people’s homes, with a whopping 10% of us predicted to rent out our homes to visitors in a bid to make a bit of extra cash.

However if we do stay in a hotel it may well be packed with digital features to allow us to perfectly adjust the room to meet our needs.

Some hotels are already using iPads to enable guests to control room temperature, order food and make spa reservations, but this is likely to expand to include interactive walls that let us browse the web or view our day’s holiday snaps, holographic personal trainers and even sensors to provide health advice.

We could even see 3D printers in hotels to provide replacement soap or toothpaste, or showers that use sound tech to provide a completely purifying clean.

Images courtesy of Skyscanner.