There is a particular kind of honesty that shows up when you are far from home, sitting in a bar you will never return to, talking to someone whose last name you might not catch. Australians know this well. We travel frequently, we travel far, and apparently, we swipe right while doing it. The question of vacation dating has a simple answer if you look at the numbers: yes, people still date on holiday, and a growing portion of them are planning for it before they even board the plane.
Swiping at 30,000 Feet (Give or Take)
Dating apps have made it possible to line up a conversation before your luggage hits the carousel. According to the 2024 Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report, 56% of Australians have opened a dating app while travelling or on vacation. That is more than half. And it suggests that for a lot of people, the impulse to connect with someone new does not shut off when they leave their postcode behind.
Air New Zealand conducted a survey of Sydney-based daters that adds another layer to this. 74% of respondents said they were open to chatting with strangers while travelling, and that includes airports, flights, and transit stops. You can read that as Australians being friendly. You can also read it as people being genuinely interested in what happens when they meet someone with no shared social circle and no overlapping routine.
Relationship Preferences Don’t Stop at the Airport
Australians on holiday tend to carry their dating habits with them. According to the 2024 Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report, 56% of Australians have used a dating app while travelling. Air New Zealand surveyed Sydney-based daters and found 87% are open to or have already had a holiday romance, while 74% said they would chat with strangers in airports, on flights, or in transit.
Some people use that time away to explore connections they might not pursue at home, from casual flings to sugar daddy dating to something more long-term. Travel loosens routine, and preferences follow.
The Pre-Trip Swipe
Some Australians are not waiting until they arrive at their destination. The data from the Air New Zealand survey shows 39% of respondents are “future-matching,” which means swiping on people in a city or country they plan to visit. Another 37% are “geolusting,” or browsing profiles in places they have no immediate plans to go. And 26% admitted to faking their location on apps to access a different pool of people entirely.
Tinder’s Passport Mode, which lets users set their location to another city, gets activated roughly 145,000 times per day around the world. Gen Z users activate it 9 times more frequently per month than other age groups. There is a pattern here that goes beyond idle curiosity. People are treating travel and dating as activities that feed into each other.
Sydney Singles Are Looking Elsewhere
A detail worth pulling out of the Air New Zealand survey: 62% of Sydney singles have considered dating outside the city. 41% said they have given up on the local scene altogether.
That is a large chunk of people who feel their options at home are limited or exhausted. For them, vacation dating is less about spontaneity and more about expanding the field. A trip to Melbourne, Bali, or Auckland becomes a chance to meet someone they would not have crossed paths with otherwise. The geography changes, and so does what feels available.
What Happens After the Holiday
This is the part nobody talks about enough. A holiday connection can be fun and self-contained, or it can create a situation where 2 people in different cities are trying to figure out if the thing they started has legs. Long-distance relationships that begin on vacation face an obvious logistical problem, and not everyone is willing to work through it.
But some people are. Cheap flights between Australian cities, and relatively short distances to places like New Zealand and Southeast Asia make follow-up visits more realistic than they would be in other parts of the world. A 3-hour flight from Sydney to Auckland is not the same barrier as a 14-hour flight from Sydney to London.
Privacy and Safety on the Road
Using dating apps in unfamiliar places comes with practical concerns. The Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report was published in the context of online safety, and the data about Australians using apps while travelling sits inside that frame. Sharing your location with a stranger in a city you do not know well is a different calculation than meeting someone 10 minutes from your apartment.
Basic precautions still apply. Tell a friend where you are going. Meet in a public place. Do not share your accommodation details until you feel comfortable. These things matter more, not less, when you are away from your usual support network.
So, Do People Still Date on Vacation?
They do. In large numbers. With apps, without apps, in airports, on beaches, and in hotel bars. Australian travellers are not treating dating as something that pauses at departure. They are carrying it with them, planning around it, and in some cases, building trips that account for it from the start. The data confirms what most people already suspected: a holiday is still one of the most common places to meet someone new.