The travel industry has been thoroughly shaken up over the past 20 years. Travel agencies, for the most part, gave way to travel sites. Hotels may still be the most prominent form of lodging for the conventional traveler, but online hospitality services like Airbnb are not far behind. And when it comes to travel destinations, people are opting for the ones less-traveled-to.
Airbnb recently composed their Travel Trend Forecast for 2018 using booking data from their site. Based on upticks, percentage-wise, in bookings, these are Airbnb’s predicted top 10 most popular travel destinations of 2018:
Gangneung, South Korea – 2175%
Bournemouth, UK – 353%
Edmonton, Canada – 284%
Indianapolis, IN – 256%
Da Nang, Vietnam – 255%
Columbus, OH – 254%
Gazimagusa, Cyprus – 234%
Bilbao, Spain – 234%
Hanoi, Vietnam – 212%
Matinhos, Brazil – 209%
The number one spot may not have rung a bell 15 years ago, but this February, it will sit firmly in the spotlight. Gangneung is a coastal South Korean city right next to Pyeongchang, the host city of the 2018 Winter Olympics. Number 13 on the trending destinations list was Minneapolis, Minnesota, the host city of Super Bowl LII.
When it came to the most popular cities to travel to, the usual suspects seemed to continue to reign supreme in terms of sheer booking volume:
Tokyo
Paris
Osaka
New York City
London
Rome
Orlando
Miami
Sydney
Lisbon
In the U.S., there has been a major surge in midwestern travel (Indianapolis, IN—256%) and when it came to the neighbors to the north, the Canadian Rockies (Edmonton, AB—284%) have been particularly hot as of late. In Europe, Asia, and South America, some of the hottest destinations were Matinhos, Brazil (209%), Guangzhou, China (190%), and Bournemouth, U.K. (353%).
