FREETOUR.com Data Reveals How Travellers from 51 Markets Choose Different Cultural Experiences

FREETOUR.com, the global marketplace for free walking tours and local travel experiences, has released a new analysis of more than 337,000 tour selections made by over 264,000 travellers from 51 countries and territories during a six-month period in 2026. The data shows that travellers may visit the same cities, but often choose markedly different versions of them.

The strongest data signal came from Italian travellers, who selected experiences focused on politics, war and 20th-century history 66% more often than the FREETOUR.com platform average. Travellers from Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia collectively showed the strongest preference for architecture and design experiences, booking them 59% more often than average.

The findings are based on anonymised and aggregated booking data and identify relative patterns within the FREETOUR.com user base. They are not intended to describe every traveler from a country or to explain why an individual makes a particular choice.

“The interesting finding is not simply that travellers book history, food or architecture tours. It is how certain experiences stand out when we compare each market against the same platform-wide baseline. These differences tell us something about observed booking behaviour, but they should not be mistaken for fixed national preferences or explanations of why people travel,” said Jürgen Müller, Data & Analytics Specialist at FREETOUR.com and author of the study. 

Selected Cultural Travel Interests by Origin Market 

“Travellers do not simply choose a destination — they choose the version of that destination that matters most to them,” said Alexandra Dubakova, Chief Marketing Officer at FREETOUR.com. “A city can offer history, food, architecture, art and nightlife at the same time, but booking behaviour shows that different source markets consistently prioritise different layers. This is valuable intelligence for destination marketers, experience providers and tourism businesses that want to communicate with visitors more precisely.”

What the Data Shows

Across the full dataset, history and heritage tours remained the largest thematic category, accounting for 30.7% of analysed selections. Iconic sights and city highlights followed at 16.6%, while local-life and hidden-gem experiences accounted for 11.6%. However, the greatest differences appeared in specialised themes, where national booking patterns diverged from the platform-wide average.

Spanish travellers showed a clear preference for late-day discovery. Evening and nighttime experiences accounted for 3.48% of their selections, compared with 2.52% across the platform, producing a +38% relative index. Religious and Jewish-heritage routes also performed above average among Spanish users, as did mystery and legend-themed experiences.

French travellers showed two equally strong cultural signals. Art, street art and music experiences were booked 43% more often than average, while food, market and tasting tours were selected 41% more often. Ancient history and archaeology also showed elevated interest, indicating a wider preference for creative, culinary and heritage-rich city experiences.

German travellers selected food and tasting experiences 25% more often than the platform average. Art and street-art tours indexed 14% higher, while local-life and hidden-gem formats were 11% above average, suggesting a particularly strong appetite for experiences connected to contemporary local culture rather than only landmark sightseeing.

British travellers did not conform to the typical tourism stereotype of choosing pubs and nightlife first. Instead, they over-indexed on ancient history and archaeology by 18%, food experiences by 17%, and politics, war and 20th-century history by 16%. Pub and nightlife tours, meanwhile, indexed roughly 15% below the platform average.

US travellers demonstrated a strong architecture and design signal, selecting such experiences 20% more often than average. They also showed above-average interest in castles and royal history, as well as food and local-market tours.

Italian travellers produced the report’s largest single-market difference. Political and 20th-century history represented 3.99% of their bookings versus 2.41% across the platform. They also showed higher-than-average demand for local-life and hidden-gem experiences, ancient history and archaeology, and myths and legends.

Methodology

Data period: Six months in 2026

Dataset: More than 337,000 tour selections by over 264,000 travellers

Markets: 51 countries and territories

Data source: Anonymised and aggregated FREETOUR.com booking data

Measurement: Each country’s share of bookings in a tour category was compared with the platform-wide share for that category. A +20% index means that category represented a 20% larger share of bookings from that market than across all analysed bookings.

Classification: Tour themes were assigned from the primary subjects and activities listed in tour descriptions. Categories can overlap because individual tours may include, for example, architecture, art and iconic sights.

Limitations: The analysis reflects observed booking patterns on FREETOUR.com. It does not control for tour availability, language supply, destination mix or individual traveler motivations, and should not be interpreted as a universal representation of entire national populations.

Read the full study: How Cultural Travel Interests Differ Across Countries, published on the FREETOUR.com blog, includes the complete findings, country-level comparisons and methodology.