Rome2Rio 2026 Travel Trends Report: Travelers Are Falling for Trains, Tiny Towns, and the Journey ItselfShort flights are out; scenic routes, hidden villages, and slower travel are very in
Rome2RioJan 12, 2026
Travel in 2026 is slowing down, spreading out, and getting a lot more interesting, according to the newly released Rome2Rio 2026 Travel Trends Report. Travelers around the world are skipping short flights, embracing trains and ferries, and trading packed capitals for charming villages and quieter corners of the world.
The data shows a clear shift: instead of racing from airport to airport, people are choosing journeys that feel calmer, more scenic, and easier to enjoy. The takeaway is simple. How you get there now matters just as much as where you’re going.
What’s Trending for Travel in 2026
Trains are having their main character moment: Trains, buses, and ferries are now the go-to choice for short trips, with more than 96 percent of short-distance journeys globally favoring surface transport. For many travelers, surface travel is easier, more relaxing, and often faster door to door.
Hidden destinations are having a moment: Searches to villages, islands, and off-the-beaten-path places are climbing fast. Travelers are looking for places with personality, fewer tour groups, and room to wander and finding it in medieval towns, coastal hideaways, alpine valleys, and small communities.
Slow travel is speeding up: Longer stays, fewer stops, and more intentional trips are on the rise. Travelers are staying put for days or weeks at a time and exploring nearby regions instead of rushing from city to city. Winter and shoulder-season travel is also growing as people chase calmer, cozier experiences.
Multimodal trips are the new normal: Nearly half of all Rome2Rio searches now include more than one mode of transport. Travelers are happily combining trains, buses, ferries, and local transfers to unlock routes that feel smoother and more flexible than flying alone.
Sustainability shows up in real choices: Rather than thinking about sustainability in abstract terms, travelers are acting on it. Choosing trains instead of short flights, traveling closer to home, and spreading trips across the year are becoming everyday decisions that feel good and make sense.
“People aren’t just planning trips anymore, they’re designing journeys,” said Wendy Olson, CEO of Rome2Rio. “We’re seeing travelers choose trains over planes, smaller towns over capitals, and slower travel over packed itineraries. The trip itself has become part of the adventure. When travel feels easy, people go further and discover more.”
The full Rome2Rio 2026 Travel + Mobility Trends report, including regional insights, is available HERE.
About the Rome2Rio 2026 Travel Trends Report
The Rome2Rio 2026 Travel Trends Report is rooted in market shifts and behavioral observations from our global, on-the-ground marketing experts, and data-driven insights from thousands of sources across global transport modes, determining as many as tens of millions of routes per day, and with over 100 billion potential unique searches. The report reflects real travel intent from millions of people planning real trips around the world.
About Rome2Rio
Rome2Rio, part of Omio Group, is the global leader in trip and route planning, helping its over 600 million annual visitors find the most cost-efficient, expeditious, and convenient ways to journey anywhere in the world. Available in 240 countries and territories, and 10 million+ locations, users can quickly compare and coordinate train, ferry, bus, plane, and car travel as well as discover hotels that meet their travel needs. By simply entering a starting point and destination, Rome2Rio instantly shows the best possible ways to travel between locations with detailed and accurate maps, price estimates, travel times and distances – and direct links to book. For more information, please visit www.rome2rio.com.
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About Rome2Rio
Rome2Rio answers one deceptively simple question that still breaks travel planning in 2026: How do I actually get there?
Used by hundreds of millions of travelers worldwide, Rome2Rio makes every journey discoverable by showing every realistic way to move from A to B. Flights, trains, buses, ferries, rideshares, and even the occasional gondola all surfaced in one clear view. The result is confidence. Travelers can see their options, understand the tradeoffs, and choose the route that fits their time, budget, values, and sense of adventure.
Behind the scenes, Rome2Rio is also a rare window into how people really move around the world. By making global mobility visible and connected, the platform reveals real patterns of human movement that inform smarter travel planning, better destination stewardship, and more responsible tourism.
From Inspiration to Access: Turning Curiosity into Movement
Travel inspiration is everywhere. Access is not. Rome2Rio sits at the moment where curiosity becomes commitment. Travelers may fall in love with a hidden village, a coastal town, or a national park on social media, but they book when they can clearly see how to reach it. Rome2Rio bridges that gap by pairing inspiration with door-to-door access, turning “I want to go” into “I know how to get there.”
This is why the platform is increasingly central to stories about rising interest in secondary and tertiary destinations, slower travel, and deeper cultural exploration.
The Infrastructure Story Reporters Are Missing
Travel rarely happens in one mode or in straight lines. Rome2Rio acts as the connective layer across the world’s fragmented transport systems, stitching together rail, bus, ferry, regional routes, and on demand transfers into a single, navigable journey. It is the only global platform that shows every realistic end to end option, including routes most travelers would never think to search on their own.
As surface first and multimodal travel accelerates, Rome2Rio has become a living map of how infrastructure, traveler values, and behavior are shifting in real time.
Dispersion by Design: From Promotion to Stewardship
Destinations are moving from pure promotion to active stewardship, and Rome2Rio is built for that shift. By making mobility visible, the platform naturally disperses travelers beyond overcrowded hubs and into places that want and can support more visitation. Travelers gain confidence to explore responsibly, and destinations gain a tool to manage where and how visitors flow.
This is sustainability in practice, not theory. It is about showing better options and making them easy to choose.
Human + AI: Why Accuracy Still Matters
Rome2Rio blends large scale AI with something generative systems alone cannot provide: human validated reality.
AI helps model, rank, and surface millions of possible journeys. But people on the ground keep the data honest, up to date, and locally relevant, capturing ferry schedules, bus routes, and regional connections no API includes. That combination is what makes Rome2Rio a trusted source for both travelers and the industry at a moment when confidence and accuracy matter more than ever.
Jan 12, 2026
