A funny thing happened while the travel industry was celebrating its recovery. Demand is back, and different. The flights are full, the hotels are busy, but the map of where people are actually going has shifted. If your budget is still betting on the same cities, the map you’re using might be out of date.
The crowd is thinning at the top
For decades, London, Paris, Rome, and Barcelona dominated European travel. They’re still very popular, but the growth is spreading. More and more of the new demand is landing somewhere else.
According to Digital Sardine’s analysis of Google Trends data for US travellers searching flights to European destinations over the past two decades, London and Paris remain high-interest, but their relative share has declined while secondary cities have grown faster. Europe as a whole is attracting more travellers than ever, but a growing chunk of them are heading somewhere that wouldn’t have made the list ten years ago.
London’s case is particularly telling. Saturation, price inflation, overtourism fatigue, and the friction added by the UK’s new ETA requirement have all compounded at the margins. None of these factors is dramatic on its own. But in a market where travellers have more substitutes than ever, even small barriers are enough to tip the decision somewhere else.
Discovery moved first, then the flights followed
The redistribution started with how people find out about places. Short-form video, streaming, food media, and cultural content have reshaped which destinations enter a traveller’s consideration set, often passively, long before any search is made. A city gets featured in a Netflix series, a food creator posts from a market in Tbilisi, a travel account highlights the coastline outside Thessaloniki.. and suddenly a destination that wasn’t on anyone’s radar starts accumulating real search interest.
This is a structural change in how the top of the travel funnel works. Destinations can now build awareness without relying on traditional media or big marketing budgets. The consideration set has widened dramatically, and it keeps widening.
But curiosity alone doesn’t fill seats. What converted new interest into actual bookings was low-cost airlift. In 2025, low-cost carriers overtook mainline airlines to become the largest segment of European aviation for the first time, accounting for over 35% of all flights, up from near zero in the late 1990s. Ryanair, easyJet, Vueling, and Wizz basically rewired the map, turning secondary airports into viable options for mainstream travellers at scale. No route, no bookings – no matter how much interest there is.
The detour destination is now a default
Expedia’s Unpack ’25 research (based on a survey of 25,000 travellers across 19 countries) found that 63% plan to visit a secondary or detour destination on their next trip. Not instead of an iconic city, but alongside one. Reims near Paris, Brescia near Milan, Girona near Barcelona. Travellers are adding a stop that offers better value and fewer crowds, without scrapping the trip they originally had in mind.
Enough people are doing this now that it’s moving the needle on booking patterns, search behaviour, and where accommodation demand actually shows up.
What this means for travel brands
The next wave of growth won’t come from the same cities that drove the last one. It will come from dozens of smaller markets that don’t look like much individually, but add up to a lot when you zoom out. That has direct implications for where you build inventory, how you structure campaigns, and which markets you prioritise.
There’s also a real and underappreciated opportunity in search. Digital Sardine’s analysis of Google Ads data shows that CPCs for secondary and detour destinations are typically 15-30% lower than their iconic counterparts, with meaningfully less competition. The intent signal is just as strong (someone searching “hotels in Girona” is as close to booking as someone searching “hotels in Barcelona”) but the auction is far less crowded. Most travel brands haven’t structured their campaigns to capture this efficiently. The window for early movers is still open.
When everyone’s chasing the same cities, the game is optimisation. Now that demand is spread across dozens of smaller markets, the game is coverage: getting there before it gets obvious. The brands that move now will have a head start that’s hard to close.
→ This piece was produced in collaboration with Digital Sardine. Based on their research and data, it reflects FutureTravel’s editorial perspective on search, demand, and performance marketing in travel.