When you build a trip in Routely, you tag it with a vibe: food, cultural, adventure, romantic, and so on, however many apply. We counted how often each one shows up across every real trip in the app. Some of it is exactly what you'd guess. Some of it isn't.
The full ranking
- Food — 372 trips
- Cultural — 343 trips
- Popular — 336 trips
- Nature — 273 trips
- Shopping — 251 trips
- Historical — 250 trips
- Adventure — 224 trips
- Relaxation — 218 trips
- Romantic — 43 trips
- Family — 28 trips
- Nightlife — 6 trips
Food wins, and it's not close
No surprise at the top: food beats every other vibe, including "cultural" and "popular" combined against some of the smaller categories. This is consistent with everything else we've found in our own data: the single most-saved food spot in both Tokyo and Paris (Omoide Yokocho and the Marché couvert des Enfants Rouges) get saved more than most landmarks in their own cities. People plan trips around where they're going to eat as much as what they're going to see, whether they admit it going in or not.
The real story is at the bottom
Nightlife shows up in six trips. Out of hundreds. That's not a close last place, it's a category almost nobody tags on purpose. Our best guess: nightlife isn't something people plan around, it's something that happens after a day of doing the other ten things on this list. You don't build a trip called "nightlife," you build a food-and-cultural trip that happens to end up at a bar alley in Shinjuku at 11pm.
Romantic and family aren't far ahead, 43 and 28 respectively, which lines up with who's actually using a group trip planner: more friend groups and solo travelers than couples on an anniversary trip or families with kids in tow.
What "popular" tells you about how people actually plan
"Popular" sitting at number three, ahead of nature, shopping, historical, and adventure, is the most honest data point on this whole list. Most people aren't building a highly specific themed trip. They're building a trip around the stuff that's actually worth seeing, the landmarks, the food, the neighborhoods everyone already knows about, and letting the specific vibe sort itself out once they're there. Which, if you think about it, is exactly how trip planning should work: start with what's genuinely good, not with a theme you have to force the whole itinerary into.
Curious what "popular" actually looks like spot by spot? Start with Routely Presents and see what real trips to your next destination actually saved.
