Travel: Secondary cities beckon

Once, a trip to Japan meant visiting Tokyo for its bustling Shibuya and Shinjuku districts.

- Sarah Stanley

France meant Paris for the Eiffel Tower. Thailand meant Bangkok for the Sukhumvit shopping stretch.Today, more Singaporeans are skipping the usual tourist trail and heading to quieter towns, regional cities and cultural centres, fuelling a trend that was once the domain of the more adventurous: second-city travel.

Experts who spoke with The Sunday Times say this shift reflects a maturing travel palate shaped by cost pressures, destination fatigue and a desire for slower, more immersive experiences.

The outlook for 2026 across booking and metasearch platforms point to a surge of interest in destinations outside the central hubs that once dominated Singapore travellers' itineraries.

For instance, comparing year-on-year searches by Singapore travellers, Skyscanner found a 316 per cent increase for Guiyang - the capital of Guizhou province in southwest China - and a 141 per cent rise for Padang, a city in west Sumatra, Indonesia.

According to Expedia, cities such as Chiang Mai in Thailand and Da Nang in Vietnam recorded a 20 to 30 per cent increase in searches, comparing data from July to November 2025 with the same period in 2024.

This trend extends well beyond Southeast Asia, with secondary cities in Europe drawing growing interest from Singapore travellers.

Based on International Air Transport Association's (IATA) AirportIS origin-destination passenger data from January to July, the top 10 European cities without direct flights to Singapore but with the highest passenger traffic from Singapore were Madrid, Geneva, Dublin, Warsaw, Hamburg, Oslo, Dusseldorf, Lisbon, Stockholm and Edinburgh.