Manchester, Preston and Newcastle have all been named among Booking.com’s top five trending UK destinations for 2023.
The revelation comes in Booking.com’s annual Travel Predictions Report – revealing the hottest trends and where to go next year. Top trends for next year globally include off the grid trips, VR travel experiences and nostalgic trips, while Booking.com identified Manchester’s musical history, and its vibrant current gig scene as a particular draw for major and up-and-coming artists and audiences alike.
The report was good news for the UK regions as a whole, with Glasgow and Birmingham filling the final two spots in the top five, and London nowhere to be seen.
The report found that people around the world are feeling overwhelmingly more optimistic about travelling in 2023 compared to 2022 and, despite some current instability felt globally, 66 per cent of Brits report that travelling will always be worth it.
The mood, said the travel giant, “is shifting from one of hopeful uncertainty to bold adaptability. If 2022 was about the triumphant return of travel, 2023 will be about creatively reimagining it amidst the chaos.”
Booking.com’s research saw it quiz more than 24,000 travellers across 32 countries and territories, and combining the results with its own insights as a leading digital travel platform to reveal seven emerging travel predictions.
Arjan Dijk, Senior VP and chief marketing officer at Booking.com said: “If the last few years have taught us anything it’s that travel should not be taken for granted. This year’s travel predictions research shows the undercurrent of intentional paradoxical behaviours that will put us all more comfortably in the driving seat amid relentless instability. It also demonstrates a desire for travel to be a way to seek unapologetic moments of happiness and escapism to counteract the heavy realities of our news feeds. As such, at Booking.com our aim will continue to be to make it easier for everyone to seek their unique travel bliss in a more personalized and connected way in the year ahead and beyond.”
The three Northern hotspots are in good company in the report. Their five peers in the globally trending top five were São Paulo, Budva (Montenegro), Pondicherry (India), Querétaro (Mexico) and Italy’s Bolzano.
