Best destinations
for a stopover

Why have a stopover?

If you ever want to go anywhere exotic, long-haul flights are a necessary evil. The triple whammy of jet lag, lack of sleep and hours in a cramped seat can take its toll – sometimes it takes days to recover from.

But we’ve got good news. There’s a better way to go long haul, and it could be easier to engineer than you think. According to our research of 2,000 UK adults, making the most out of a stopover may be the answer to avoiding long-haul stress, with 54% of Brits saying they’d prefer to turn their stopover into a small holiday.

It makes sense. You can’t always choose the location of your stopover on a long-haul journey, but you can often extend it for free. That means, instead of spending several hours in the airport waiting for a connecting flight, you can take advantage of the stop and spend up to a week exploring a new place – without any added cost on your airfare. So after spotting the potential benefits, we set about finding out the best way to make a stopover work for you.

How to make the most of a stopover

When it came to the different features our travellers wanted in a stopover destination, most cited a short distance from the airport to the city (34%). Naturally, you don’t want to spend any longer in transit, and a quick dash from airport to stopover city helps you maximise your time there.

A good choice of hotels near the airport (28%) was another must, along with the destination being compact and easy to get around (25%) to let you cram in as much sightseeing as possible before jetting off again.

Where to plan a stopover

We were pleasantly surprised by the breadth of the best destinations, with the top 10 including a wide range of destinations in Europe, Asia and North America, giving you a great spread of routes where you can maximise your layover. Want to see if you could make the most of a handy stopover on a trip you’re planning? Have a browse for flights now.