Travel shifts to smaller cities

Spring travel demand is moving toward smaller cities and secondary stops, not just the biggest hubs. (fooddrinklife.com) Food Drink Life reported on April 13 that travelers are building spring trips around places with easier bookings, lighter crowds, and enough restaurants, museums, and outdoor stops to fill a long weekend. The same report cited IBISWorld’s forecast of about 717 million domestic trips by United States residents in 2026, up about 4% from 2025. (fooddrinklife.com) Expedia said in its October 15, 2025 Unpack ’26 report that several 2026 “Destinations of the Year” were “beyond the crowds,” including Big Sky, Montana, up 92% in flight-and-stay searches, and Fort Walton Beach, Florida, up 45%. Expedia said the list was based on year-over-year increases in searches between 2024 and 2025. (expedia.com) Skyscanner’s 2026 trending-destinations page said United States travelers are shifting attention to “smaller, lesser-known destinations” and highlighted places such as New Haven, Connecticut, and Vail, Colorado. The company said it analyzed tens of thousands of data points to identify destinations with the biggest year-over-year search surges. (skyscanner.com) That creates an opening for places like Kingman, Arizona, a city of 35,383 people in the Census Bureau’s July 1, 2024 estimate. Kingman sits on Interstate 40 and the future Interstate 11 corridor, a location city officials have been trying to turn from a pass-through into a stop. (census.gov, tourism.az.gov) Josh Noble, the City of Kingman’s deputy director of economic development and tourism, said the city’s challenge is changing the perception that Kingman is “a pit stop on the way to somewhere else.” He said the city has focused on infrastructure and attractions that pull visitors deeper into downtown, including a Tesla Supercharger site and the Route 66 Drive Thru Shield that opened in July 2021. (tourism.az.gov) Kingman’s local development arm said on January 30 that an Avid Hotel with 92 rooms broke ground in 2025, alongside new restaurant openings including El Pollo Loco, Charlie & the Pizza Factory, and Tasty Thai Cuisine. The same update said work continued on the United States 93 and Interstate 40 interchange and on Flying Fortress Parkway, projects tied to the city’s airport and industrial park. (choosekingman.com) The pitch for smaller-city travel is not that every small place wins automatically. The places getting traction in this cycle are the ones that can offer a compact, bookable weekend or a clear stop along a larger route. (fooddrinklife.com, tourism.az.gov) For Kingman, that means turning highway traffic into an actual visit. In a travel market tilting toward quieter, easier trips, the cities with one strong reason to pull off the road have a better shot at getting booked. (tourism.az.gov, fooddrinklife.com)