After Valentine's Day, there is 'dining only': bookings for one person on the rise

Dining out as a couple in a (more or less) romantic restaurant is among the most popular habits, perhaps together with flowers and chocolates, to celebrate Valentine's Day. According to estimates by Fipe Confcommercio, this year six million Italians will dine by candlelight 6 million for an expenditure of 330 million. And more generally, reservations for two at restaurants are the most popular throughout the year.

However, in addition to Valentine's Day and the less celebrated Singles' Day on 15 February (San Faustino), another trend seems to be emerging: dining alone is gaining ground, an increasingly popular habit also among Italians, who in the past were not so keen on dining alone. In common feeling, these were mainly occasions limited to travelling workers or the like, whereas now people are starting to talk about "solo dining". More and more people, in short, are choosing to dine alone at a restaurant, experiencing food not only as a convivial experience, but also as a gesture of self-love.

Recording this trend are booking data collected byTheFork, the Tripadvisor platform that is the world leader for this type of digital service: customers who have booked for one in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, represent 4.6% of the total on the platform and book on average more than five times a year. In Italy alone, they accounted for4.1% of the total in 2024, a growth of 15.3% compared to 2023, which is higher than the overall year-on-year growth in bookings.

In the first three weeks of 2025, bookings made by a couple accounted for 58 per cent of the total. Also according to TheFork, from 2022 to 2024 'the number of restaurants where bookings were made by couples increased by 38%. This trend reflects a general increase in demand, with holiday bookings growing 46% between 2022 and 2024'.

More and more people are looking for quality experiences: "In 2024, restaurants with a TheFork rating above 9 doubled their bookings compared to 2022. In parallel, gourmet and starred restaurants recorded strong interest, confirming that Italians like to treat themselves to exclusive gastronomic moments for special occasions such as Valentine's Day. In particular, for Michelin and starred restaurants, the growth in bookings since 2022 is +37%".