85% of Travelers Take Day Trips as Bookings Grow 110%

Here’s what the numbers show:

• 85.4% of travelers take day trips when visiting a destination.
• Day trip bookings are up 110.7% year over year.
• 64.9% go to see the countryside, seaside, and natural landscapes.
• One in four day trips sold in 2026 is a brand-new experience.
• The Tuscany villages, Sintra, and Mont-Saint-Michel are the fastest-growing day trips.

• 64.9% of respondents say they take day trips because they’re curious to see the countryside, seaside, and natural landscapes beyond the city. After a few days of museums, churches, and crowded piazzas, open space is the draw: rolling vineyards, sea cliffs, and views no city center can offer.
  
  
• 53.4% already have a specific attraction outside the city in mind. These travelers arrive with a plan, whether it’s Pompeii, Sintra, or Mont-Saint-Michel, and the day trip is how they get there.
  
  
• Only 8.5% simply want a break from visiting a city. For most travelers, a day trip isn’t an escape from the itinerary. It’s one of the highlights of it.

Respondents could choose more than one reason.

Pompeii is one of the best-known destinations for international travelers, and most arrive with the same picture in mind: a Roman city frozen in time by the eruption of 79 AD. The new archaeologist tour from Rome tells the other half of the story.

An archaeologist leads the walk through the forum, public baths, and private villas, explaining how the city worked before the eruption. After a Neapolitan pizza lunch on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, a volcanologist takes over for a walk on the volcano’s lower slopes, pointing out lava flows and volcanic vents and the forces that buried the city.

Chianti is one of Tuscany’s most familiar names, and it often shows up as one stop on a broader countryside itinerary. Now a tour that was once folded into a wider Tuscany day is dedicated entirely to wineries.

Travelers leave Florence for two family-run vineyards, with sommelier-led tastings at each, a traditional Tuscan lunch, and samples of local olive oil and balsamic vinegar along the way. The best part – nobody has to be the designated driver.

The visit to the Tuscany villages from Rome is the fastest-growing day trip on The Tour Guy platform, with quadruple-digit growth in bookings.

It packs a lot of central Italy into a single day. Travelers cross the 300-meter footbridge into Civita di Bagnoregio, a village perched on pale tufa cliffs, then head to a family-run winery near Montepulciano for handmade pici pasta and wine tastings. The day ends with free time in Pienza, a Renaissance hill town overlooking the Val d’Orcia.

The trip to Sintra from Lisbon also registered quadruple-digit growth in bookings.

Sintra’s hilltop palaces have long been a favorite escape from Lisbon, and this small-group trip pairs them with the coast. Travelers stroll the bay in the seaside town of Cascais, stand on the cliffs of Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point of mainland Europe, and try a pastel de nata and a sip of ginjinha, a local cherry liqueur, in Sintra’s historic center.

The trip to Mont-Saint-Michel from Paris follows closely as the third fastest-growing day trip.

Few places in France are as instantly recognizable: a medieval abbey rising from an island in the bay, where the tides periodically turn the hill into a true island. Travelers walk up the narrow Grande Rue through the village with a guide, then explore the abbey, from its cloisters to terraces overlooking the sand flats. It’s a long day from Paris, and travelers are booking it anyway.