In a fast-attention economy, the idea of the long-form holiday read seems like an outlier product, yet books are still big business, and the choice of book to take away on vacation still matters, perhaps now more than ever, as the work week creep and constant connectivity make having time to oneself so precious.
That scarcity also means reading has become aspirational. Being able to take time to read, not scroll, has become almost performative, reaching a frenzy at holiday times. Book-Tok booms during the “summer reading” season, garnering over 80 million global video posts for the hashtag, according to the TikTok Newsroom.
Feeding into the reading flex, consumers increasingly prefer to spend leisure time “improving themselves.” As Travel Tomorrow recently reported, skill-based holiday activities that involve learning are growing in popularity – and reading is an essential part of that.
17th century influencers
But the “holiday read” is not a new phenomenon. As far back as the 17th century, when young European aristocrats began completing the rite of passage that was a Grand Tour of Europe, reading along the way provided an essential bridge between their classical education and newly lived experience.
With the Industrial Revolution, the rise of the railways, and eventual gains in workers’ rights to time off, even more travellers enjoyed newfound comfort and time on their hands to read. The UK National Railway Museum details how well-known bookstore WHSmith pioneered travel retail in 1848 by opening the world’s first platform bookstall at London’s Euston Station, leading to a nationwide network of book concessions at transport hubs.
Bookstores and books designed travellers
Reading products were then designed to appeal to those on the go, as a WHSmith blog explains. For commuters, publishers created “Yellowbacks.” These were inexpensive, mass-market paperbacks with bright illustrated covers, easier to carry and costing nowhere near as much as hardbacks, meaning they were not too precious to bear the indignities of travel.
The airport bookshop and its titles became a direct descendant of that market. Publishers such as Hudson Group, officially founded a hundred years ago in 1926, survived the ups and downs of late 20th-century publishing by tapping into the trend. They opened dedicated travel-hub stores, starting at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport, transforming transit news kiosks into the dominant book-selling environments still recognised today.
In that airport bookstore habitat, the products tend to be organised in a way that is very helpful to people browsing in a rush, despite sometimes limited space. Newspapers and magazines are clearly grouped, while entire walls are dedicated to top ten countdowns of best reads and international best sellers. As the Penguin blog article on airport bookshops notes: “They narrow your selection for you, sometimes forcing you to pick up something you might not otherwise – especially if you happen to finish your packed books before you’re set to fly home.”
Airport editions of books often appear different to those elsewhere too. As best-selling author Richard Osman recently explained on The Rest is Entertainment, due to tax rules, airports can sell “trade paperbacks”, which are the attractive, larger size of hardbacks but have a soft cover and so are less heavy and unwieldy.
The psychology of the holiday read
Given the pressures on hand luggage, though, and the proliferation of devices that rival books for our attention, why has our love of reading on journeys endured so well? After all, it’s arguably counterintuitive to have one’s head buried in a book when one has the chance to be immersed instead in new scenery and surroundings—and indeed has taken time and savings to do just that?
Psychology Today explains that reading allows adults to set up a “guilt-free boundary to claim small pockets of solitude.” Like wearing a pair of earphones or buds, a book establishes a zone of privacy around the reader—which can provide important relief from the stresses of transit, being in new surroundings, and being surrounded by strangers.
What’s more, the act of reading itself provides a cognitive interlude away from daily stresses, stimulating what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls a “flow state,” which promotes optimal focus and reduces anxiety. Surely a helpful mindset for better enjoying any journey?
Reading feeds travel, and travel feeds reading
I would argue the opposite is also true: I read better when I’m away. As a reader, some of my most unforgettable books were consumed on a memorable vacation. I read Stieg Larsson in Namibia, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History in the Pyrenees, and Milan Kundera in Sydney, and I know that my special love for these books (and many others) comes from the different type of attention I brought to them because I was away from home. Likewise, as a novelist and travel writer, I often find my books take root when I’m in a new place, and I am trying to capture the feeling that location inspires.
A similar interplay is at work in the data around how, if reading is encouraged by travel, travel today is also driven by reading. Hilton has named reading among its 2026 travel trends, and Morning Consult reports 53% of US travellers are interested in a dedicated reading retreat (55% of men and 49% of women), while a whopping 67% of millennial Americans expressed a desire to attend one.
Trips inspired by literary locations, from short breaks in Shakespearean cottages to Harry Potter experiences in Shanghai, are increasingly popular. A Tokyo book district was chosen as Time Out’s coolest neighbourhood for 2025, and Future Market Insights says literary tourism generated $2.4 billion last year and is predicted to grow to $3.3 billion by 2034.
Ultimately, as well as being good business, travel and books both provide escapism and ways of resetting the nervous system, and when the two activities combine, the power and resonance of that escape can last a lifetime.
