If you want to know what really matters to Gen Z, look at how they travel.
This is a generation choosing passport stamps over property deeds. As the Financial Post reported, more young people are prioritizing travel over saving for a home, reversing the old life-stage script their parents followed. It's easy to read that as reckless. It's more useful to read it as a signal: when homeownership feels out of reach, travel becomes one of the few big purchases where a young consumer still feels agency and reward.
The spending data backs it up. American Express Travel's 2025 research found 79% of Gen Z rank leisure travel as a top budget priority, and 84% would rather fund a dream vacation than a luxury purchase. They protect travel budgets even while trimming elsewhere.
That has implications well beyond travel. If discretionary money flows toward trips, it comes from somewhere, whether apparel, dining, or the grocery cart. The tradeoff is already visible: in iSeatz's Modern Traveler 2025 study, 63% of travelers cut back on everyday purchases like dining out and shopping to protect their ability to travel. Travel is also a considered decision, full of research and comparison, so how Gen Z navigates a booking is a window into how they make consequential decisions in general.
We were curious about all of this, so in July 2026 we ran a study on the Rival platform, engaging 878 Gen Z participants from our proprietary panels across the US and Canada. The report, The Ever-Evolving Rules of Gen Z Travel, provides a glimpse into how these young consumers are booking, staying and spending their dollars.
Here's what stood out.
For Gen Z, reviews beat the brand name
Nearly two-thirds of Gen Z travelers, 61%, say online reviews are the biggest influence on where they book. Just 14% cite a hotel's brand name.
For decades, the brand on the sign was the shortcut that told a traveler what to expect. For Gen Z, the shortcut is now what other guests actually experienced. The reputation you earn one stay at a time outweighs the reputation you built one ad campaign at a time.
This isn't unique to travel, but travel makes it vivid. Expedia's 2025 Traveler Value Index found that reviews and trust now weigh as heavily as price for many travelers, with roughly three in four willing to pay more for lodging that has stronger reviews.
The takeaway for travel and hospitality marketers is direct: the guest experience is the marketing. The review section is not a service afterthought sitting downstream of the brand. For this generation, it is the brand.
Practical value punches above its weight
Gen Z travelers are romantic about the trip and ruthless about the room. In our study, nearly half, 48%, say amenities like a pool, gym, or breakfast influence where they stay. Free breakfast (56%) and free Wi-Fi (50%) rank alongside loyalty rewards (48%). Social media sways just 12% of booking decisions.
The point isn't that Gen Z are cheap. They're discerning about where value shows up. A free breakfast is a tangible, every-morning proof point. A splashy campaign is a promise. Given the choice, they trust the proof point.
Hotels lead, but they no longer dominate
Only 43% of Gen Z default to a hotel. Another 27% say it depends on the trip, and 21% reach for Airbnb. That leaves the majority genuinely open to alternatives on any given trip.
For hospitality brands, "we're the obvious choice" is no longer a safe assumption. The default has softened into a decision, and a decision can be won or lost each time.
This is why it's critical to have ongoing consumer insights. Engaging Gen Z audiences for message testing, for example, can help ensure that your ads and communications are hitting. Customer journey mapping studies could help surface opportunities on how to nudge potential customers and remove barriers to purchase.
Nuances in Gen Z travel habits
Gen Z is not a monolithic group — and insights from our study shows some important nuance that hospitality and travel brands need to consider.
Loyalty appetite grows with age
Interest in rewards programs nearly doubles across the cohort, from 13% among 18-to-20-year-olds to 24% among 25-to-29-year-olds, along with rising interest in room upgrades, flexible cancellation, and early or late check-in.
Loyalty isn't dead with Gen Z. It's just arriving later than it used to.
Reviews and breakfast are universal
Both hold steady across every age band, making them table stakes rather than differentiators. Compete on either and you're competing not to lose, not to win.
US and Canadian travelers diverge
Canadian Gen Z lean even harder on reviews (66% versus 57%) and are likelier to skip loyalty programs entirely (21% versus 13%).
US Gen Z put more weight on free Wi-Fi (57% versus 43%) and digital check-in (25% versus 12%) when deciding who to book with.
For marketers, this highlights a simple fact: A single North American playbook will underperform in at least one of the two markets.
The trip itself is about meaning, not status
84% of Gen Z say the most meaningful trip is one that changes how they think, and 79% value experiences they don't photograph over getting great photos. This is not a generation traveling to perform. It's one traveling to feel something.
Gen Z travel: The influence of social media and AI platforms
There's an assumption among marketers that Gen Z travel to post. There's some truth to this: for instance, a 2026 study from the University of Georgia found that social media could influence Gen Z's travel plans.
Our data shows a more nuanced picture.
That 79% who value unphotographed experiences over great photos is already a crack in the stereotype. Add this: 45% rarely or never post on social media while traveling, and social media influences just 12% of their booking decisions.
Now, that 12% needs a careful reading, because it doesn't mean social is irrelevant. It means discovery is not the same as decision. Social platforms clearly own the inspiration stage. Recent research found Gen Z reach for Instagram (60%), TikTok (53%), and YouTube (54%) when looking for travel inspiration, and BookTok-style trends routinely turn a niche destination into a must-visit. But the moment money is on the line, they switch tools.
The dream starts on a feed. The booking gets settled by reviews, which drive 61% of their decisions, and increasingly by AI. Skyscanner's 2026 Travel Trends report found Gen Z lead every generation in AI adoption, with 72% confident using AI to plan and book, and Simon-Kucher put AI use for inspiration and itinerary planning above 60% among younger travelers. Kayak even found 41% of the younger travelers it surveyed would trust an AI recommendation over friends and social media.
There's a second wrinkle worth watching: Gen Z are starting to push back on the sameness that social creates. In Kayak's research, 69% of Gen Z said they now prefer places that are off their feeds, chasing destinations they haven't already seen a hundred times on TikTok. The viral spot can just as easily become the overexposed spot.
Yes, this is a digitally native generation. But that's not the same as performing for the feed, or booking from it. For a lot of Gen Z, the phone stays in the pocket more than we assume, and the trip is for them, not their followers. The practical implication for marketers is to match the channel to the job. Use social to spark the dream, since that's where discovery happens, but win the actual booking with the things this generation trusts to close: credible reviews, real proof, and AI-ready content that surfaces cleanly when they ask a chatbot where to stay. Travel marketing that leans entirely on aspirational, camera-ready moments may be speaking to a smaller slice of Gen Z than it thinks.
Their preferences will change, and that's the whole point
Surveying a generation between 18 and 29 means photographing a moving target. Gen Z are in the middle of enormous life changes: first "real" jobs, moving in with a partner, the milestones that reshape what they want from a trip. As they move into new life stages, their preferences move with them.
Our Gen Z travel research already shows the shift in progress. Watch how travel priorities harden across just this one generation:
- Interest in rewards programs nearly doubles, from 13% at ages 18 to 20 to 24% at ages 25 to 29.
- Room upgrades climb from 30% to 38% in importance across the same span.
- Flexible cancellation rises from 27% to 36%, a very grown-up thing to start caring about.
- Amenities overall grow from 43% to 51% as a booking influence.
Read those together and you can watch a carefree young traveler turn into a discerning repeat guest who wants points, flexibility, and a room upgrade. The 22-year-old backpacker and the 28-year-old booking a long weekend are both "Gen Z," but they are not the same customer. Brands that notice the transition early get to grow with these travelers instead of chasing them after the fact.
The research questions you'll want to keep answering
None of this holds still, which is really the point. A single study is a great start and a poor finish. If Gen Z is your future customer, the useful questions are ongoing ones:
- As they age into new life stages, which preferences flip, and how fast?
- Where is the line between "authentic" and "trying too hard" in your category this year, versus last?
- Which of today's table stakes become tomorrow's differentiators, and vice versa?
- How differently do your US and Canadian Gen Z travelers actually behave, beyond the averages?
These are hard to answer with a one-time survey and easy to answer with an ongoing conversation.
That's the space we work in. Rival helps hospitality and consumer brands stay close to changing customer expectations through insight communities, Voice of Market studies, and other agile research programs, so you're in a standing dialogue with your customers rather than checking in once a year. For teams that want a ready-made pulse on this generation, our Emerging Consumer Index tracks Gen Z attitudes across the US and Canada through biweekly research, giving subscribers regularly refreshed data they can explore through AI-accelerated tools. It also helps keep synthetic audiences and large language models grounded in real human data.
Gen Z will keep changing the script on what travel is for. The brands that keep listening are the ones that will still be on the itinerary.
