The Trip Test Awards 2026
The year in group travel, judged.
Fifteen winners, picked from the demand signals that actually moved in 2026 — flight search interest, group-rental inventory, booking-platform supply, and per-traveler value. No reader votes. No bucket lists. Just where groups went, and what that says about how they travel.
Nashville, TN
Runners-up · Scottsdale, AZ · Charleston, SC
Honorable mention · Asheville, NC
Still the consensus #1 on every 2026 list, and the only city with a hard number behind it — 11,000+ bachelorette parties in the 2023 Bach data. But the format changed: a smaller group, a rented house, a private chef, and fewer 2am nights. Nashville won again by becoming a different trip.
Scottsdale, AZ
Runners-up · Nashville, TN · Las Vegas, NV
Honorable mention · Big Sky, MT
Contrarian on purpose. Vegas and Nashville are the defaults; Scottsdale is the one that fits the 2026 shift — golf, a pool, and a house that works for the sober guy and the drinker in the same group. It's already #2 in the bachelorette data, and Big Sky is the surprise that earns the press line.
Outer Banks, NC
Runners-up · Great Smoky Mountains / Sevierville, TN · Mexico City, Mexico
Honorable mention · Lisbon / Porto, Portugal
Airbnb's playcation data names the towns — Nags Head, Kill Devil Hills, Holden Beach. Beach houses, surf, drive-to for half the country, sleeps twelve. The Smokies are the stronger data pick but lean family; the Outer Banks is the friend-group pick.
Japan
Runners-up · Hawaii · Charleston, SC
Honorable mention · Scottish Highlands, UK
Honeyfund's dataset is the cleanest couples data we have — Japan's highest ranking ever, and Mexico out of the top three for the first time in eight years. That's a real story. Charleston is the domestic pick reflecting the 23% domestic shift; the Highlands are the Pinterest-adrenaline crossover.
Great Smoky Mountains, TN/NC
Runners-up · Costa Rica · Italy
Honorable mention · Outer Banks, NC
Park centennial, Airbnb's top trending globally, national-parks demand up 35%, and Road Scholar's data favoring parks and wildlife. The cheapest big-name family trip in the country, on a drivable radius for half the U.S. Easy call.
30A / Seacrest Beach, FL
Runners-up · Lake Tahoe, CA/NV · Hilton Head, SC
Honorable mention · Palm Desert, CA
This is a house-inventory award and Vrbo's list is the evidence. 30A has the deepest supply of six- to eight-bedroom homes with two living rooms — which is the whole two-families problem, solved in drywall.
Big Sky, MT
Runners-up · Philadelphia, PA · Sevierville, TN
Honorable mention · Bilbao, Spain
The only place on Expedia's Destinations of the Year, Vrbo's Rentals of the Year, and Fora's fastest-growing states — Montana up 143%. Three independent datasets agree. The strongest award in the whole program.
Sevierville / Smokies, TN
Runners-up · Asheville, NC · Mexico City, Mexico
Honorable mention · New Orleans, LA
A real $80-a-night and a real $800-a-night version of the same trip, ten minutes apart. Mixed budgets are where friend groups quietly break, and this is the one market where the spread doesn't force anyone to negotiate their budget out loud.
Charleston, SC
Runners-up · Lisbon, Portugal · Lake Tahoe, CA/NV
Honorable mention · Costa Rica
Walkable enough for the planner, porch-and-oyster enough for the wanderer, and the group can split for an afternoon without logistics. When half want a museum crawl and half want to sit somewhere, Charleston is the compromise that doesn't feel like one.
Sedona, AZ
Runners-up · Great Smoky Mountains, TN/NC · Costa Rica
Honorable mention · Scottish Highlands, UK
Hiking, spa, stargazing — and nobody notices you're not drinking. Backed by Booking.com's 22% sober-travel signal and the Gallup decline in drinking among 18–34s. A destination the non-drinker doesn't have to explain at dinner.
Italy
Runners-up · Alaska / Canadian Rockies · Great Smoky Mountains, TN/NC
Honorable mention · Squam Lake, NH
Road Scholar names it directly. Villas with pools solve the grandparents-rest-while-kids-go problem better than anywhere. Three generations, one farmhouse outside Florence, one rental car — and nobody fights.
Big Sky, MT
Runners-up · 30A / Seacrest Beach, FL · Breckenridge, CO
Honorable mention · Lake Tahoe, CA/NV
Vrbo's Rental of the Year is literally a Big Sky ranch with a party barn. The market that actually builds for groups — large lodge homes with enough room that fourteen people don't feel like fourteen people in one kitchen.
Asheville, NC
Runners-up · Sevierville / Smokies, TN · Mexico City, Mexico
Honorable mention · Mũi Né, Vietnam
Flagged at under $1,000 per person for a bachelorette — breweries, hiking, and a real downtown. Giving it Value here keeps Asheville from being a runner-up everywhere and a winner nowhere.
The American West revival
Runners-up · Event-driven group travel · The sober-curious group trip
Big Sky, Jackson Hole, Montana up 143%, Utah up 113%, national-parks demand up 35%, and 2027 forecasts already pointing at cowboy culture. The defining shift in where groups went — and a compatibility test in motion, since the West rewards the group that can actually agree on a plan.
Mexico City, Mexico
Runners-up · Asheville, NC · Sevierville / Smokies, TN
Editor's Choice, because we killed the vote. Mexico City is the destination that kept showing up across the data — runner-up for friends, mixed budgets, and value — without taking any single category. The group-trip pick by attrition: the one that works for the most kinds of groups, even when it isn't the best at any one thing.
Trending newcomers
Where it's going next.
Not awards — the destinations showing up across the data without a category to put them in yet. The ones to watch for 2027.
Big Sky, MT
The obvious one — it's the year's story.
Philadelphia, PA
Booking.com's only U.S. trending city, flagged for group travel around the 250th.
Sevierville, TN
Gen Z's gateway to the Smokies, per Airbnb.
Asheville, NC
The value bachelorette pick that keeps showing up.
Bilbao, Spain
Booking.com trending; the Basque food-trip answer for a friend group that's done Lisbon.
Mũi Né, Vietnam
Booking.com trending; the budget-mismatch friend-group play.
Martha's Vineyard, MA
Fora +278% in wedding bookings; expect it in bachelorettes and couples trips next.
Scottish Highlands, UK
Pinterest's biggest travel trend (+465%); the couples and sober-curious crossover.
How we judged
Demand, not taste.
Winners are chosen from where groups actually booked, not where we wished they had. We weighted four signals: flight search interest into the destination, group-rental inventory (homes that sleep eight or more), booking-platform supply growth, and per-traveler cost for a typical long weekend — cross-checked against named datasets from Bach, Honeyfund, Airbnb, Vrbo, Expedia, Fora, Road Scholar, Booking.com, Pinterest, and Gallup.
The point isn't a bucket list. It's a mirror. Where the data went up is where the friction points live — the budgets, the pace, the drinking, the planning — which is exactly what The Trip Test surfaces before you book.