2027 Travel Trends for Hikers: What Booking.com, Skyscanner, Expedia and Hilton Predict

Every fall, the biggest names in travel publish their predictions for the year ahead. This year Booking.com, Expedia, Skyscanner and Hilton all released their 2027 travel trend reports within a few weeks of each other.

We read them with one question in mind: what do the 2027 travel trends mean if you hike? The answer made us grin.

Strip away the catchy trend names and the four reports point in the same direction: get outside, put your phone away, and do something that makes you feel alive.

In other words, they’re describing a hiking trip. Here’s what each report predicts, and what it means for your 2027 hiking plans.

What Do the 2027 Travel Trend Reports Say About Hiking?

None of the 2027 travel trend reports is about hiking, which is exactly why they’re interesting. They’re written by booking sites, a flight search engine and a hotel group, about travelers in general.

Yet the same themes keep coming up: trips built around an activity, time in nature to recharge, a break from screens, shorter and more frequent getaways, and more trust in real people who know a place. A multi-day hike ticks every one of those boxes.

Booking.com 2027 Travel Predictions: What They Mean for Hikers

Booking.com’s 2027 Travel Predictions sum up the year in two words: going off-script. Its nine trends are about travelers swapping the predictable vacation for something that surprises them.

Sweat Synergy: Solo Travelers Meeting People Through Sport

Booking.com calls one of its 2027 trends Sweat Synergy: solo travelers connecting with other people through sports, shared physical challenges and active trips.

What it means for hikers: hikers figured this out a long time ago. Nothing bonds strangers faster than hauling yourselves up the same pass, then comparing blisters over dinner in a mountain hut.

If you’re hiking solo in 2027, a hut-to-hut route gives you that built-in community every night. Our guide to hut to hut hiking in Europe explains how it works.

Traveling solo, but don’t want to be alone? Our two guided tours come with the company included.

On Guided Hiking in the Slovenian Alps, you spend 8 days in Triglav National Park in a group of no more than 8 hikers, sharing the trail, the mountain huts and the evenings.

On the Peaks of the Balkans Guided Hiking Tour, you hike for 11 days through Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro, and the group stops being strangers somewhere around the first border.

Plot Twist Trips: Doing Something Completely Out of Character

Booking.com’s headline 2027 trend is the plot twist trip: a vacation built around doing something completely different from what you’d usually choose.

What it means for hikers: if you’ve always been a beach-and-a-book person, your first multi-day hike is the plot twist. The trick is to pick one that makes you feel brave, not broken.

Our Val Gardena and Alpe di Siusi hiking tour in the Italian Dolomites is graded a Good first trip: 5 days, 3 hiking days and 2 nights in mountain huts, with the jagged peaks of the Dolomites all around you.

Can’t quite give up the beach? You don’t have to. Our Costa Brava, Croatia, Cinque Terre and Lycian Way hiking tours are all 8 days, and they give you a whole new way of seeing a beach: from the trail above it first, then from your towel, knowing you hiked there. Your luggage gets moved for you too, so the book can travel ahead and meet you.

Expedia Unpack ’27: What the Expedia 2027 Travel Trends Mean for Hikers

Expedia’s Unpack ’27 report pulls together trends from Expedia, Hotels.com and Vrbo. Two of them could have been written by a hiker.

Trip Snacking: Shorter, More Frequent Getaways

Hotels.com predicts more trip snacking in 2027: travelers fitting frequent, bite-sized breaks into busy lives instead of saving everything for one big vacation.

What it means for hikers: you don’t need two weeks off to do a real hut-to-hut hike in Europe. Two of our Dolomites tours are 5 days long, so they fit into a week’s vacation with time to spare.

Try Seiser Alm to the Rosengarten for a Moderate trip across Europe’s largest high-altitude alpine meadow, or Val Gardena and Alpe di Siusi for a gentler start.

Heartland Hideouts: Hobby Trips to Inland Places

Vrbo’s 2027 trend, Heartland Hideouts, is about trips planned around what you love to do, in quieter inland places with local culture, great food, history and outdoor adventures.

What it means for hikers: hiking is the original hobby trip, and some of Europe’s best hiking is a long way from the coast.

Our Andorra hiking tour gives you a glacial lake on five of your six hiking days and 7 nights in 4-star hotels. In southern Spain, the Alpujarras and Sierra Nevada hiking tour bases you in three Moorish villages, with the option to summit Mulhacén, 3479 m (11,414 ft).

If your other hobby is wildlife watching, our Gran Paradiso hiking tour combines the two. You hike for 6 or 9 days through Italy’s first national park in the Italian Alps, where ibex and chamois often graze close to the trail and, with luck, golden eagles circle overhead. Pack the binoculars: it’s the only hobby trip where stopping halfway up a pass counts as research.

Skyscanner Travel Trends 2027: What They Mean for Hikers

Skyscanner’s Travel Trends 2027 report names seven trends. Three of them read like a hiking packing list: switch off, get fit, and go somewhere with a story.

Signal Severance: Travelers Who Want to Switch Off Their Phones

Skyscanner’s Signal Severance trend is about travelers who want a real break from their phones and digital distractions on vacation.

What it means for hikers: it’s much easier to forget your phone when the view is better than anything on it. On a hut-to-hut hike your day is simple: hike, eat, sleep, repeat, and the only notification that matters is the next pass.

For a true switch-off, hike the Gran Paradiso hiking tour in Italy’s first national park, where you’ll see more ibex than hikers.

Gym-cation: Travel Built Around Fitness

Skyscanner’s Gym-cation trend sees fitness shaping where and how people travel in 2027.

What it means for hikers: skip the hotel gym and let the mountains be the workout. If you want the biggest challenge we offer, the Haute Route from Chamonix to Zermatt in the French and Swiss Alps is our most challenging tour.

Want a longer training block? Both 11-day Peaks of the Balkans hiking tours, guided or self-guided, give you 9 hiking days through Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro.

That’s more than 8300 m (27,230 ft) of elevation gain, almost the height of Everest, one family guesthouse at a time.

Or hike the full circuit of Mont Blanc on our 10-day Tour du Mont Blanc: 158 km (98 miles) through France, Italy and Switzerland.

Whichever hike you choose, start training early with our free 6-week hiking workout plan.

Grand Odysseys: Trips Inspired by History and Myth

Skyscanner’s Grand Odysseys trend is about trips inspired by history, classical stories and myth.

What it means for hikers: on foot, history isn’t behind glass in a museum. You hike right through it.

Our Mountains of Catalonia hiking tour takes you past Romanesque chapels and medieval villages to a last night at Montserrat Monastery. On the Italian Riviera, the Cinque Terre hiking tour links Portofino, the five villages and Portovenere.

In Turkey, our West Lycian Way hiking tour follows the ancient trading routes of the Lycians along the Mediterranean. You pass the ghost town of Kayaköy and stop at Xanthos, the old Lycian capital and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Then you finish among the ruins of Patara, which is on UNESCO’s Tentative List. It’s the rare history lesson with a swimsuit in your daypack.

Hilton 2027 Trends Report: What It Means for Hikers

Hilton’s 2027 Trends Report is called The Great Rebalance, and its big idea is that travelers are trading the perfect trip for a good-ish one. Three of its five trends matter for hikers.

Nature-Led Wellness: The Outdoors as the Way to Recharge

Hilton found that travelers increasingly treat fresh air and time outdoors as the way they relax and recharge on a trip.

What it means for hikers: you already knew a day in the mountains beats a day at the spa. Now a hotel group agrees with you.

For nature with a view of the sea, the Costa Brava hiking tour follows the cliffs of Catalonia, and you finish every day in a different seaside town. For green valleys and quiet foothills, hike the Wicklow Way in Ireland in 5 or 8 days.

For rivers, lakes and forest, our Best of Juliana Trail and Alpe-Adria Trail tour in Slovenia is the one we’d pick to recharge. You follow the emerald Soča River over hanging bridges at your own pace, your luggage moves between stages, and you finish at Lake Bled, where the only thing left to plan is how long to stare at it.

Trust in Human Expertise: Real People Over Endless Research

Hilton’s report also finds travelers putting more trust in real people with local knowledge when they plan a trip.

What it means for hikers: planning a multi-day hike yourself means dozens of open tabs, booking every night along the route and hoping nothing falls through. When you book with Monkeys and Mountains, we save you the time and hassle and do it all for you.

We plan the route and book every night, you hike at your own pace. Here’s what you get on a self-guided hiking tour.

Prefer your expert in person? On our two guided tours, Guided Hiking in the Slovenian Alps and the Peaks of the Balkans Guided Hiking Tour, a local mountain guide hikes with you, so the answer to “which way?” is a few steps ahead of you on the trail.

Good-ish Over Perfect, and Shorter Stays

Hilton’s headline trend is travelers embracing good-ish over perfect, and planning shorter stays that pack a lot in.

What it means for hikers: no hike is perfect. There’s always one rainy afternoon or one climb that goes on longer than you’d like, and that’s the story you’ll tell for years.

If a famous route is already full for your dates, a good-ish swap can turn out even better. See our Tour du Mont Blanc alternatives and Alta Via 1 alternatives.

Which 2027 Travel Trend Reports Are Still to Come?

Two more reports hikers care about usually land in December: Pinterest Predicts and Strava’s Year in Sport. Strava’s is the one to watch, since it’s built on what millions of people actually did outdoors.

We’ll add both to this article when they’re out, so bookmark it and check back in December.

2027 Travel Trends for Hikers: FAQs

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