Having spent 10 days working and playing golf in Benalmadena, Spain, this week, I think I may have stumbled upon a new travel vertical. The semi-retired digital nomad like me! We are gradually forsaking multiple weekend breaks, fitting them around work during the week in the UK. As a new breed of traveller, staying in month-long Airbnb apartments and just using video conferencing to liaise with our UK-based colleagues.

Across mainland Spain, building work seems to be continuing with abandon, but the focus has shifted from villas to lockable apartments near golf courses, with excellent central facilities such as pools, gyms, and restaurants, all with virtually guaranteed sunshine to keep residents cheerful.

These are far from budget accommodation, and when I chatted to local estate agents to explore prices and suss out what was driving this building spree, I found that, surprisingly, even given the 90 days in every 6-month rolling period imposed on Brits post-Brexit, we are still the top investors, followed by the Dutch, Germans and Scandinavians, with new source markets from the USA and Eastern Bloc countries.

However, these agents felt that the most interesting trend was the number of these apartments that were immediately appearing on Airbnb sites for Rent, with the Brits in particular looking to rent their unused months to cover their service fees.

This is creating a massive opportunity for Digital Nomads like me. For example, purchasing a brand-new luxury 3-bedroom apartment in the Cala Nova Golf course area would cost me 750,000 Euros, whereas the same apartments were available on Airbnb for 1,500 Euros per week or a bargain 3,200 Euros per month, meaning the owner would need 20 years of rentals to recoup their investment.

This is clearly nuts, but if you research it, it is occurring across the holiday resorts of Europe, as ownership of holiday accommodation shifts from professional hoteliers, who price based on a need to make a profit, to private owners just looking to contribute to their running costs.

Airbnb has already impacted the holiday market, with many customers combining its offers with low-cost flights to create a low-cost week’s holiday in the Sun. But I don’t think we have seen anything yet.

What’s interesting is how a few different forces are converging to make a new breed of Digital Nomads possible.

Developers are building large numbers of low-cost apartments that aren’t flashy but are perfectly suited for medium-term living. Budget airlines have effectively stitched Europe into a dense, highly accessible network, making movement between countries easier than ever. And Airbnb has evolved beyond short weekend breaks into something much more aligned with this new way of living, offering longer stays, flexible arrangements, and spaces that feel more like homes than hotel rooms. When all of this comes together, it enables a behaviour that wasn’t really viable before: rotating between places rather than settling in just one.

COVID-19 taught us we can work from home, and a few businesses have never fully returned to the office, with most employees working 2 days a week from home and relying on video conferencing to attend in-office meetings. But this still locks most of us into a UK working environment.

However, I believe AI implementation will further reduce working hours, with most employees dropping to 4 days or even 3 days a week, increasing our leisure time and holiday days. There will be fewer jobs to go around, and as a society, we will have to share them if we don’t want a meltdown, with society brutally split between the rich and the poor.

This suddenly raises the question. Why do I need to be based in the UK all the time?

Some people will permanently relocate, but my bet is that more will become digital nomads like me, wandering the holiday destinations of Europe, enjoying the weather, golf, and plentiful restaurants, before returning regularly to see our friends and family in the UK.

Of course, Brits are still facing the consequences of the Brexit Vote. The rules of the Schengen Area, particularly the 90-day limit in any 180-day period, shape how any Digital Nomad lifestyle could work in practice. If you’re not an EU citizen, you can spend three months in Spain or any other Schengen Area country, but you must leave for another three months before returning. Rather than stopping people, this tends to create a rhythm. People move between Spain, the UK, and low-cost long-haul winter destinations like Goa and Thailand almost in a loop. It’s a pain, but it’s easy to deal with.

If this way of living continues to grow, it could have some pretty significant knock-on effects for the travel industry. The idea of a traditional two-week holiday might become less relevant if people are already spending months of the year abroad. Seasonality could begin to flatten out, with destinations seeing a steadier flow of longer-term visitors instead of big summer spikes. Hotels, which are designed around short stays, may find themselves competing more directly with residential-style accommodation that offers kitchens, workspaces, and a sense of normal life. Even airlines might see demand shift away from big, predictable peaks toward more frequent, smaller trips tied to these rotating lifestyles.

All of this raises an interesting question: are we starting to move beyond the idea of the “holiday” altogether? It won’t disappear, but it may become just one small part of a much broader way of living.

Cheap property, low-cost flights, and flexible work are combining to create a new kind of global citizen. Someone who doesn’t escape their life through travel but instead builds their life around it. And if you look closely at what’s happening in Spain right now, it feels like an early glimpse of where things might be heading

And the answer is YES. I am interested in investing in or creating a business to exploit this new trend, so get in touch if you’ve got the skills and drive to make it work.