The staycation story for 2026 has largely been framed around rural favourites. Recent travel reporting has pointed to a surge in interest for destinations such as the Lake District, the Cotswolds and Wales, with searches for “UK holiday cottage” reportedly up 260% this month and demand for classic domestic breaks rising sharply year on year. The Lake District led that uplift with a 129% increase in search interest, followed closely by the Cotswolds at 128%.
At first glance, that looks like a countryside-only trend. But the real opportunity may be broader. As more travellers look closer to home, shorter domestic breaks are becoming a bigger part of the UK tourism picture, and that creates an important property angle for major regional cities. Manchester, in particular, looks well placed to benefit.
This matters because a staycation boom does not only support cottages, coastal lets and rural cabins. It also supports city breaks, event-led travel, family weekends, food tourism and short cultural trips. In a city with strong domestic appeal, growing accommodation supply and a substantial visitor economy, rising staycation demand can feed directly into the performance of short-term stays, serviced apartments and city-centre rental accommodation.
The staycation trend is getting bigger
The broader data points in the same direction. The Office for National Statistics reported 93.8 million guest nights in UK short-term lets from July 2024 to June 2025, up 10.2% on the previous 12-month period. In England alone, guest nights rose by 10.8%. That suggests demand for flexible short-stay accommodation is expanding well beyond a handful of seasonal hotspots.
For the property market, that is significant. It shows that domestic travel habits are still evolving and that short-term accommodation remains an active part of the visitor economy. While some of that demand is naturally captured by traditional leisure destinations, cities with strong events, food, shopping and entertainment offers also stand to gain.
Manchester has many of the right ingredients. It is already one of the UK’s strongest visitor destinations outside London, with the latest Marketing Manchester intelligence showing that Manchester recorded around 2.5 million overnight domestic trips per year, while Greater Manchester saw an estimated 36.8 million domestic tourism day visits. The same source shows Manchester received 1.7 million international visits in 2023, ranking it third among UK cities behind only London and Edinburgh.
Why Manchester fits the modern staycation model
The modern staycation is not always a week-long escape. Increasingly, it is a shorter, easier trip that feels convenient, flexible and experience-led. That plays to Manchester’s strengths.
The city’s leisure profile already shows what visitors come for. Marketing Manchester’s 2023 leisure visitor research found that 59% of visitors ate out, 56% visited a museum or gallery, 49% visited a historical site or building and 44% went shopping. Staying visitors were even more active, with three quarters eating out and visiting museums or galleries, while 28% attended a festival or event and 26% went to a sports fixture or event.
That kind of behaviour supports a different type of short-stay demand from the classic holiday-cottage market. In Manchester, the appeal lies in:
- weekend food and drink trips
- concerts and live events
- football and sports travel
- cultural breaks
- family short stays
- shopping-led city escapes
Those travel patterns can create consistent demand for well-positioned short-term accommodation, especially in and around the city centre.
A city with more reasons to stay overnight
Manchester is also continuing to strengthen its visitor offer. Visit Manchester highlighted a series of new and expanding attractions for 2025, including the opening of Treehouse Hotel Manchester with 224 bedrooms, plans for Victoria Warehouse to increase its room offer to 200, and a growing pipeline of cultural and hospitality activity across the city. The same tourism material also points to major events, performances and festivals that help turn Manchester into more of a destination for overnight and weekend stays rather than a simple day trip.
That is important from a property perspective. A city that gives people more reasons to stay overnight is a city that creates more demand across:
- serviced apartments
- aparthotels
- short-term lets
- city-centre investment stock
- mixed-use developments with strong hospitality appeal
The visitor economy data reinforces that point. Marketing Manchester estimates the economic impact of tourism activity in Manchester Local Authority at £4.65 billion in 2022, while Greater Manchester’s wider tourism activity was valued at £8.7 billion. The 2023 leisure visitor survey also found that a staying visitor spent an average of £237 per person per day, including accommodation, with an average trip value of £701.
What this could mean for the property market
For property investors, the staycation angle is less about replacing traditional buy-to-let logic and more about understanding another source of demand. If more Britons are choosing UK-based breaks, and if flexible short stays continue to rise, Manchester could see further support for accommodation types that serve both leisure and event-led visitors.
That does not mean every property automatically becomes a short-let opportunity. Regulation, management intensity, location and building rules still matter. But it does mean the market conversation is widening. Demand is no longer shaped only by long-term renters, students and professionals. In the right parts of the city, short-stay demand can become part of the investment picture too.
