Travel remains resilient across the U.K., France and Germany, but 2025/26 behavior has fractured into three distinct national stories.
U.K. travelers are taking more trips. German travelers are taking fewer trips but spending more per trip. France stands apart entirely, with outsized demand for rentals, rail, car rental and experience-led travel.
A single pan-European playbook is no longer works, and Phocuswright's Europe Consumer Travel Report 2026 breaks down exactly where these markets are pulling apart.
The research funnel is also being rewritten
Travelers report doing less research overall than last year, yet online travel agencies (OTAs) have overtaken general search as the top resource for researching trip components, a meaningful shift for SEO, paid search and OTA strategy.
Artificial intelligence (AI) remains a secondary planning tool, but it's growing fast across all three markets and increasingly shaping destination choice.
Offline, recommendations from friends and family remain the influence travel marketers can't control.
Booking decisions stay practical
Ease of use, prior experience, simple search and trusted reviews still drive conversion more than novelty.
Indirect channels dominate air and hotel booking, especially in Germany, while France shows a pull back toward direct channels, a divergence with real implications for distribution strategy.
Human assistance still outperforms AI assistance in most markets, even as AI-assisted booking expectations rise.
The AI opportunity is real, and it's polarizing
Roughly a third to four in 10 travelers across the three markets now use AI for travel planning.
But adoption splits: About three in 10 AI-aware travelers are open to AI-assisted booking, while a similarly sized group remains skeptical AI can support the trips they actually want. That split, not the growth number, is the strategic question facing every travel brand.
External pressures are shaping demand too
Geopolitical concern is affecting comfort with long-haul travel, particularly in France, and roughly four in 10 travelers in each market feel less comfortable visiting the U.S. than a year ago.
Still, future intent remains strong: Most travelers expect to hold trip frequency, length and class steady over the next 12 months.
Phocuswright's Europe Consumer Travel Report 2026
This report is based on an online survey fielded in April 2026 among leisure travelers in the U.K., France and Germany who had taken at least one overnight trip in the past 12 months and played an active role in planning and booking it. It examines how travelers research, choose and book trips, including the roles of digital and offline resources, social media, AI, digital identity and geopolitics in shaping travel behavior and future intent.