With more people than ever opting for overland trips, bookings up 80% year-on-year, it’s not surprising that Byway’s 2026 travel trends report spotlights the biggest shifts in flight-free families, AI-driven planning, and Byway-coined concepts, including ‘peak creeping’.
And it’s not just traveller interests driving change. Highlighted among the list, reward tourism is already influencing visitor behaviour, with cities such as Copenhagen and Bremen offering perks to those who get there responsibly.
Meanwhile, new sleeper trains launching next year are fuelling demand for alpine summer escapes, as Brits swap the beach for the mountains.
Key themes include:
Peak Creeping: The traditional shoulder season is shrinking as the edges of summer expand, with more people opting to travel during this period in favour of fewer crowds and more comfortable temperatures. Exploring outside the peak summer months also helps ease pressure on local infrastructure, accommodation and nature spots, while supporting businesses and communities that depend on visitors beyond the summer rush.
Byway data shows that off-season departures have risen by 50% year on year, with September proving the most popular month – as departures in 2025 were up 60% compared to 2024. Meanwhile, summer departures have grown at a slower pace, with June up by around 30%. The new sweet spot is clear: April to May and September to October.
Athleisure Tourism: From marathons to Ironmans, extreme challenges abroad are dominating the headlines. Spencer Matthews is currently tackling seven full Ironmans across seven continents, while Harry Styles has gone from completing the Tokyo Marathon to quietly taking on Berlin soon after. Byway travellers, however, are favouring something gentler.
There’s been a marked rise in requests for trips that combine movement and relaxation – from a week in Siena spent cycling between vineyards and lingering over pasta-filled evenings, to morning runs through Highland villages or swims in Lake Constance without counting the lengths. Enter athleisure tourism: a term borrowed from fashion, now defining a growing travel trend that blends physical activity with a more leisurely pace.
No-Fly Families: More families – even the Solomon-Swash’s – are choosing train or ferry travel over flights, valuing comfort, space and more adventurous journeys for children. Demand for Byway’s flight-free family trips has risen by 50% year on year, based on daily bookings for 2025 compared to 2024, for trips including at least one child. If you’re travelling with children, it helps to build in slower days and plenty of stopovers to make the journey easier and even more enjoyable. Whether you’re taking the Hogwarts Express route, discovering real-life fairytale towns in Alsace, or exploring other family trips by train, the key is to keep things simple and flexible.
Reward Tourism: Cities across Europe are starting to reward travellers who arrive by train. Copenhagen’s CopenPay programme trades low-impact arrivals for free yoga classes, museum entries and bike tours, while Bremen hands out goodie bags to rail travellers. These schemes are proving popular and hint at a new form of reward tourism, where both travellers and destinations benefit from greener choices.
And the rewards aren’t just local. Over the past year alone, Byway travellers have collectively saved 2220 tonnes of carbon by travelling overland and by sea. Bookings have risen by 80% based on daily bookings for 2025 compared to 2024, while the number of new customers coming through word of mouth has doubled. People aren’t just booking more flight-free travel – they’re sharing the impact and inspiring friends to travel in ways that feel better for both themselves and the planet.
Summer highs
As European summers grow hotter, travellers are heading higher in both latitude and altitude. Alpine escapes in Austria, Slovenia and Switzerland are booming, offering a cooler alternative to the classic beach holiday. These destinations are made for overland travel: trains wind through mountain passes only accessible by rail or on foot, linking remote mountain inns, hiking trails through wildflower meadows and wild swimming spots in glacial lakes along the way.
New sleeper connections planned between Malmö, Copenhagen and Switzerland, expected to launch in spring 2026, will make these regions more accessible than ever before. Interest is already climbing: in early summer 2025 there were 24% more first-time visitors to Swiss mountain railways than the year before (2).
AI & Tech-Driven Travel
AI is increasingly part of how people plan trips, with many travellers using ChatGPT as a virtual agent. While convenient, it can sometimes get things wrong – some travellers have even missed flights due to visa misinformation. As AI use grows, tools guided by real expertise are more important than ever.
Cat Jones, Founder of Byway, comments: “At Byway, we’ve seen demand for overland holidays rise across every category, with recent growth in family and off-season travel. More people are recognising that it’s not just about getting somewhere, but about how you get there and what you experience along the way.
“Looking ahead to 2026, new sleeper routes are knitting Europe together even more, technology is helping us travel more personally and purposefully, and places and hotels are rewarding those who arrive by train. The journey is reclaiming its rightful place at the heart of travel as we move towards holidays that are more meaningful, sustainable and considered.”
