What is trip snacking? The one-night trip trend, explained

Expedia's UK newsroom defines it in one line: "Trip Snacking is the Hotels.com-identified trend of taking frequent one-night stays and weekend getaways instead of saving up for one big annual holiday." The Hotels.com trend page describes the same idea as one-night hotel stays "that fit around stacked schedules, tighter budgets, and wanting to get away more often."

Three things are worth noticing. The unit is the night, not the day: a trip snack is one hotel night, not a day trip. It is framed as a supplement to longer travel, not a replacement; the US release says travelers are doing it "in addition to saving for one big annual vacation." And it is a hotel company's term, built from hotel search data, so it naturally measures nights booked rather than trips taken by train, car or on a friend's sofa.

These are the trip snacking figures as Hotels.com and Expedia Group published them, with the global survey behind each one:

• 79% of travelers say they are planning to book a one-night stay in the coming year.
• 83% of Gen Z and Millennials say the same.
• The top reasons are celebrating a life milestone (34%), attending a concert, show or sporting event (32%) and needing a quick reset between longer trips (28%).
• 45% say finding a good deal is the most important consideration.
• 71% agree that a trip snack holds them over until the next longer trip.

The survey: third-party research by the market research company OnePoll, in line with the Market Research Society's code of conduct, conducted online between August 4 and September 1, 2026, among 26,000 adults across 16 countries who are planning domestic or international travel in the next three years. Neither the Hotels.com page nor the release lists the 16 countries.

Two more figures come from data, not the poll. Hotels.com searches for one-night stays are up nearly 10% year over year, based on searches with a check-in between Thursday and Sunday from September 1, 2025 to August 25, 2026, compared with the same dates a year earlier. Social mentions of 24-hour getaways are up 12%, based on mentions of "one-night stays" and similar terms on news sites, blogs, X, Reddit, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.

Expedia ran a separate UK poll: OnePoll again, online over the same dates, among 2,000 UK adults who plan to travel in the next three years. British respondents put the reasons in a different order: attending concerts, shows and sporting events (49%), celebrating life milestones (42%) and needing a quick reset between longer holidays (23%). The UK release repeats the global 79% and 83% figures.

The Canadian version of the release, datelined Toronto and carried on Expedia Group's investor site, keeps the 79% but gives 85% for Gen Z and 87% for Millennials, with a quick reset (29%), live events (27%) and milestones (27%) as the reasons. It does not say whether those are Canadian respondents only. If you quote the trend, quote the version for your market and say which one it is.

The 79% is a statement of intent, not a count of trips. It comes from people who already plan to travel within three years, so it says nothing about the population as a whole. The nearly 10% rise is in searches on one booking site, not in bookings or in nights stayed. Search growth can reflect more people comparing prices as much as more people traveling.

None of that makes the trend false. It means the honest headline is narrower: among people who travel, most say a one-night stay is on the cards, and interest in short Thursday-to-Sunday stays on Hotels.com is rising. The footnotes also show some loose ends. In the UK release, the 12% social figure is cited to the destinations footnote and the 71% to the Heartland Hideouts footnote, while the methods for both sit under other notes.

The label sits in a crowded field. A micro-cation is usually described as a very short, deliberately small break, with no fixed length; it can mean two or three days. Bleisure travel, a blend of business and leisure, means extending a work trip with personal time, so the trip exists for work first. Snackpacking, which Euronews listed among its 2026 trends in April, is not about trip length at all: it means hunting supermarket and street-food snacks abroad. Euronews based it on American Express's 2026 Global Travel Trends Report, which polled more than 8,000 adults in the UK, US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico and India; 89% of Millennials and Gen Z respondents said enjoying local snacks abroad is important.

Trip snacking is the narrowest of the four. One night, chosen for its own sake, usually close to a weekend.

Hotels.com lists its top trip snacking destinations for 2027 as Las Vegas, Montreal, London, Stockholm, New York City, Copenhagen, Seoul, São Paulo, Tokyo and Paris. That is a list of what people search, not of where one night works best. We cover nine of the ten, and our scores tell a different story.

Every city on our site gets a Snack Score out of 10 built from six factors: sights in a day (30%), food (15%), after dark (10%), how compact the 24-hour route is (15%), how fast the airport ride is (15%) and the cost of one night (15%). The last three are pure data. A city our own page says needs more than one night loses points. The full method is in how we score cities.

On that scale Tokyo scores 8.5 and London 8.0, both near the top. Las Vegas, the most searched, scores 6.2: its plan runs 12.4 miles along and around the Strip, the bus from the airport takes 46 minutes with a change, and the two Friday room prices average $188 (£141). Paris and New York have perfect food scores but long routes and big hotel bills, so they land in the middle of our ranking of the best cities for a 24-hour trip.

The overall leader is Florence at 8.6: a 20-minute tram from the airport for $2.20 (£1.70; €2), a 3.2-mile walking route and a one-night cost of $66 (£49) per person sharing a double. Kraków and Tokyo tie at 8.5, then Singapore at 8.3 and Rome at 8.1.

Narrower lists answer narrower questions. For Europe, see the best European cities for 24 hours, where Florence, Kraków and Rome lead. From London, the best one-night city breaks from London weigh door-to-door time, which puts Paris, Bath and York first. From New York, the best overnight trips from NYC start with Philadelphia and Washington, DC. If you are flying through a hub anyway, the best stopover cities list ranks layovers the same way.

Once you have a city, our guide to planning a 24-hour trip covers flight times, bags, the one hotel night and what to book before you fly.