Ask a 24 year old and a 34 year old where they are travelling to this year, and you will get two very different answers.
According to travel experts at Adventure360, Gen Z and Millennials booking through the same company over the same 12 months are drawing two separate maps of the world, with only one country appearing near the top of both.
Adventure360 analysed a sample of over 4,700 bookings made between 12 August 2025 and 12 August 2026 to uncover where each generation is actually travelling.
Travellers were split into Gen Z and Millennials, and every country was measured on the share of bookings that included a visit.
Where Gen Z and Millennials Travel: the Top 10 Countries
| Gen Z | Millennials | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| # | Country | % of bookings | # | Country | % of bookings |
| 1 | Thailand | 29.2% | 1 | Australia | 17.8% |
| 2 | Australia | 21.7% | 2 | Thailand | 17.4% |
| 3 | Indonesia | 11.1% | 3 | Philippines | 13.4% |
| 4 | Vietnam | 10.4% | 4 | Japan | 8.5% |
| 5 | Cambodia | 7% | 5 | Indonesia | 8.4% |
| 6 | Laos | 6.1% | 6 | Peru | 7.3% |
| 7 | Peru | 5.8% | 7 | Morocco | 6.5% |
| 8 | Philippines | 5.2% | 8 | Greece | 6.2% |
| 9 | New Zealand | 5% | 9 | Iceland | 6.2% |
| 10 | Morocco | 3.8% | 10 | Vietnam | 5.3% |
Percentages show how many of every 100 bookings in that age group included a visit to the country. Totals exceed 100% because one trip can visit several countries.
Taking the top spot for Gen Z is Thailand, which featured in 29.2% of their bookings, the single highest figure recorded for either generation and by a wide margin. Among Millennials it sat at 17.4%, in second place behind Australia.
Cambodia, Laos and New Zealand are the standout surprise of the study. All three rank inside the Gen Z top ten, and not one of them appears anywhere on the Millennial list.
The gap runs just as cleanly in the other direction, with Japan, Greece and Iceland all making the Millennial top ten and none of them coming close to charting for Gen Z.
Much of that pull is visible online long before it reaches a trip purchase. Videos recreating the mobile game Temple Run through the corridors of Angkor Wat in Cambodia have passed two million views on individual clips.
Koh Rong’s Long Beach in Cambodia was also ranked among the ten best beaches in the world this year, with images consistently going viral.
In Laos, the Kuang Si waterfalls are drawing millions of views, where “underrated” has become the most reliably used word in the captions.
The destinations generating the most views right now are the same ones climbing fastest up Gen Z’s booking data, suggesting itineraries are increasingly built around what’s trending.
Looking across both top tens, other trends stand out too:
- Thailand is Gen Z’s favourite due to affordability. It took 29.2% of Gen Z bookings against 17.4% of Millennial ones. To showcase the pricing difference, Koh Tao is the cheapest place in the world to qualify as a scuba diver, at roughly £230 to £280 for the same certification that costs £500 to £750 in Europe or Australia.
- Cambodia and Laos are booked deliberately now, rather than added on. TikTok is a big source of travel inspiration for Gen Z, and much of the content pulling in Cambodia bookings is built around the country’s low nightly rate, with creators sharing stays for as little as £16pp a night.
- New Zealand’s place on the list comes down to the working holiday visa. British passport holders aged 18 to 35 can stay for up to 36 months, three times what most other nationalities get. It ranks 9th for Gen Z and does not feature for Millennials, most of whom have aged out.
- Gen Z are choosing the quieter option on purpose. According to Skyscanner, 76% are open to picking a lesser-known destination over a popular one, and 51% have actively planned a quieter trip because of crowding, with 1 in 3 saying crowds have already spoiled a holiday.
- Japan, Greece and Iceland belong to the Millennials, and price is the dividing line. While 60% of UK-based Gen Zs expect to travel abroad more in 2026, only 45% plan to spend any more on flights to do it.
Jane McLellan-Green, travel expert at Adventure360, commented on the findings:
“Thailand has always been popular with younger travellers, but seeing it in nearly three out of every ten Gen Z bookings really shows how central it has become to that first big trip.
What has surprised me most is Cambodia and Laos. Ten years ago they were the countries people added on at the end if they had time left over. Now they are booked deliberately. In my experience, once a place starts appearing regularly on people’s feeds, the bookings follow within about a season. A lot of the drinking culture has evidently dropped off as well, and the group booking Laos is very rarely the group asking me about bar crawls.
Iceland and Japan are the two I get asked about most frequently by millennial customers . A £5 coffee in Reykjavík is a hard sell for Gen-Z when the same money covers a bed for the night in Vientiane, but millennials are much happier to pay the price.
For anyone caught between the two lists, I would always recommend New Zealand, where British passport holders can stay for up to 36 months if you’re between 18 and 35 on a working holiday visa. As an extra tip, apply for that visa the day your scheme opens, because those 15,000 places do not hang around.”
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