This Affordable Island Is the Top Vacation Spot for Couples, Research Finds

Travel is already a fantastic adventure, but when you do it with the person you love, it reaches a new level of perfection. And if you're searching for where to go next with your sweetheart, Slingo has a few suggestions. 

The gaming company shared the results of its research into the best destinations for a romantic couples trip. It determined the most popular spots around the globe by first creating a seed list of the top honeymoon spots mentioned in publications like Brides and Town & Country, specifically ensuring it includes cities, towns, and islands in its final list.

Slingo then searched each spot using Google Keyword Planner using terms like "[Location] honeymoon" and "honeymoon in [Location]" and combined the results with the number of Google searches for honeymoons for each location throughout 2023. Next, it used TripAdvisor to determine each location's number of restaurants and the number of activities geared toward couples. The team also accounted for the number of posts from each location on both TikTok and Instagram and the average cost of a meal for two at a mid-range restaurant for a three-course meal. After pulling in all the numbers, it gave each location a normalized score out of 10 and concluded that Bali, Indonesia, is the top spot for couples. 

"Bali has received 278,100 global Google searches for honeymoons over the last 12 months, more than any other destination," the team noted in the findings, adding that Bali received a total score of 8.07. "It also ranked fifth as the most popular destination on TikTok and Instagram, with #Bali having 4.7 million posts on the former and 71.7 million on the latter." 

Bali also earned high marks thanks to its affordability. As Slingo's findings noted, the average cost for a three-course meal for two at a mid-range restaurant came in at just $22.17. 

Joining Bali on the list is Santorini, Greece, at No. 2, scoring high marks for being home to the highest number of romantic restaurants of any location, followed by Cancun, Mexico; Venice; and Mallorca, Spain, rounding out the top five. The ever-romantic Paris came in at No. 6, followed by Dubai; Positano, Italy; Rome, and Marrakech rounding out the top 10.

Want to see how each destination ranked in every category? See the full results at slingo.com.