Remember when vacations were treated like major life events? You spent months planning them, saved up all year, and returned with enough photographs to make everyone sit through a two-hour slideshow. The annual holiday wasn’t just any trip. It was the trip.
For many millennials and the generations before them, that model made sense. School calendars revolved around long summer vacations, and families would pile into cars or board trains for a two-week trip that had been discussed for months beforehand. Gen Z, inventors of micro retirement and many other micro trends, are adding mini breaks to their widely expanding legacy.
According to Never The Same, a new YouGov survey conducted on behalf of Airbnb among more than 2,000 young Indians across 11 cities, seven in 10 Gen Z travellers said they would rather take three short trips than one long annual holiday. Most also prefer trips that last less than a week. This isn’t just limited to India. Across TikTok, creators have been documenting “microtrips”, which last anywhere between 24 and 72 hours.
Part of that shift reflects the realities of modern life. Flights are expensive, hotel rates rarely seem to go down, and taking two uninterrupted weeks off work can feel like a logistical miracle. A long weekend, however, is within reach. Three or four days away can fit neatly between meetings, deadlines, and the growing pile of unread emails waiting in your inbox.
The more surprising finding, however, is what Gen Z wants to do once they get there. The Airbnb survey found that two in three travellers said they travel simply to do nothing at all. Two in three travel to rest, slow down or stay in, while 64 per cent deliberately leave parts of their itinerary unplanned.
That may come as a surprise to anyone who knows how popular travel Reels continue to be today. Every friend group has that one person who somehow becomes the unpaid project manager of the holiday, armed with spreadsheets, restaurant reservations, and a colour-coded Google Map. Everyone else contributes by forwarding Instagram Reels and asking “Should we do this?”.
Now, there seems to be far less pressure to optimise every waking hour. The perfect weekend away might involve lingering over breakfast until it accidentally becomes lunch, spending an afternoon reading on a balcony overlooking the hills, or finding a neighbourhood cafe because you happened to walk past it rather than because it appeared on all the popular lists on Instagram.
And while the stay itself seems to be quite important, Gen Z is also invested in who they travel with. Three in four admit that who they travel with matters more than where they go. After all, a good trip is only as good as the people you share your minibar snacks with. It may also explain why more than half prefer sharing one banging weekend home than booking separate hotel rooms.
Perhaps the appeal of microtrips is their simplicity. They don’t require months of planning or a carefully curated bucket list and, of course, they are lighter on the pocket. Sometimes all it takes is a free weekend, a nice place to stay, and a determination to ignore your inbox for 72 hours.
