The trends rapidly changing how we all travel

I'm in Shanghai, snooping around the International Luxury Travel Market Asia, which is where the travel industry meets annually to check out all the news and trends in travel around the globe, especially our region.

Stepping out of my hotel on the first day I was almost mowed down by one of those trends – the shared bicycle. When I first visited China in 1984 there were thousands of bicycles on the streets, but in recent times the Chinese have developed a love affair with the car and motor scooter, making the streets treacherous and the air thick with carbon dioxide.

But within the year since I last visited, two shared bicycle services utilised via app, Mobike and Ofo, have taken over the city, recognising the desire of locals and visitors to get more active, and reduce the city's pollution levels while doing so. I'm still not sure I'd be game enough to cycle around chaotic Shanghai, however.

Generally, travellers are more focused on wellness. One trend I noticed doing the rounds of the market place was the increased number of "medi-spas" among the exhibitors this year, mostly in luxury resorts in Europe (Switzerland in particular) where you can discreetly check in and be overhauled, top to toe, inside and out, from your digestive system to your jawline. Once the Swiss would be promoting ski lifts, now it's face lifts.

It's not a new trend by any means, but increasingly it is hotel companies that are saving some of the world's beautiful heritage buildings. Le Cheval Blanc hotel group (part of LVMH) are restoring and renovating the magnificent art nouveau Samaritain department store in Paris, due to open as a hotel in 2018, and the Peninsula Hotel Group are turning the old Customs House on the Karakoy Quay in Istanbul into a chic hotel with a fabulous rooftop bar with views across the Bosphorus.

Most fascinating of all is the new Capella Shanghai, which is a restoration of five lanes of beautiful "shikumen'' houses off one of Shanghai's leafiest streets. Each lane has 11 houses, making 55 suites in total. The narrow houses each have four levels, steep interior stairways, opening up onto communal gardens, with tiny terraces on each rooftop. It's a bold move by this hotel group, as the houses have remained exactly the same in layout (aside from the luxury furnishings and baths) as in the 1930s.

It seems as if there is no end to the number of hotels being opened around the world, many in unique and obscure locations. (There are 10 opening in overcrowded Shanghai alone in the next couple of years.)

The new hotel everyone is talking about is the forthcoming PuXuan in Beijing, by hotel group Urban Resorts, and sister hotel to the wonderful "urban spa" the PuLi in Shanghai. The spectacular new build, designed by Buro Ore Scheeren, who created the CCTV tower, has been built on the last available vacant block in central Beijing, on the north-east corner of the Forbidden City, with views right into the great landmark. It's expected to open at the end of this year.