The world’s most romantic road trips, revealed

For those looking to marry a loving Valentine’s Day with a sense of adventure, new research from Confused.com reveals the most romantic road trips for couples to explore.
Motorists can head to Germany for the ultimate romantic drive, while Italy boasts the most idyllic locations in the world. That’s according to the study by Confused.com, who analysed hundreds of thousands of reviews from popular venues that you may encounter along each route. This was then used to calculate an overall ‘romance score’.
We kindly ask that if you find this release useful, you provide a link to www.confused.com/car-insurance who conducted the study.
The Results

View the full dataset with all 22 road-trips.
Confused.com can reveal the most romantic driving location in the world is the German Alpine Road. With a romance score of 9.56/10, the historically-enriched route is accompanied by stunning heaven-kissing landscapes. At 525km long and almost nine hours of sightseeing, drivers can stop at the Linderhof Palace or Neuschwanstein Castle for a real-life fairy-tale experience. Of all hotels and restaurants analysed, 42.77% of reviews were romantic: 3.54% more than Puglia in second place.
Meanwhile, Italy is home to three of the top 10 locations. Routes in Puglia (9.13/10) and Amalfi Coast (8.69/10) take second and third place respectively, highlighting the beauty of Italy’s seafront. Puglia provides 180km of rarely-explored coast set against a backdrop of caves and cliffs. Venues you may discover along Puglia were described as romantic by 39.23% of visitors, only 1.36% more than Amalfi Coast. These include Masseria Cervarolo, the highest-rated location of all hotels and restaurants analysed in the study, with an astounding 64.3% of reviewers finding its romanticism worthy of note.
Meanwhile, the Amalfi Coast is an opportunity for a shorter, but equally beautiful journey, at just 61km – the shortest in the top 10. This trip from Salerno to Sorrento emphasises adventure with thrilling, zig-zagging roads and the option to visit the historic ancient ruins of Pompeii. Amalfi Coast’s venue reviews indicated 37.87% of visitors feeling romantic, 3.48% more than Italy’s final route in the top 5: Tuscany, with 34.39% of its restaurant and hotel reviews including romantic language.
Scotland’s North Coast 500 is the fourth most romantic road trip earning a score of 8.26/10. This 800km circuit highlights not only Scotland’s heritage, but its natural beauty along the coastline. With checkpoints at four castles, whiskey distilleries and a waterfall, the North Coast 500 is ideal for couples looking to make unforgettable and thrilling memories. Reviews for hotels and restaurants on the North Coast 500 left a romantic impression on 35.51% of visitors, 1.96% more than the Irish Wild Atlantic Way (7.39/10) in sixth, which 34.39% of reviewers describe as romantic.
Alex Kindred, car insurance expert at Confused.com, comments: “Taking a road trip, at home or abroad, can make for an unforgettable experience. And if you’re travelling along some of the most romantic or idyllic routes the world has to offer, take turns behind the wheel. This offers you both the chance to enjoy the scenery while avoiding tiredness. Though, if you do go down this route, it’s important to remember that whoever’s driving must be insured in line with the laws of the country you’re travelling in. And this could vary depending on if you’re taking your own car, or hiring. 
“Knowing what you need to do or buy before driving abroad can be confusing. So we’ve compiled everything you need to know about driving abroad, including a checklist of the essentials you need. But always check with your insurer if your policy allows you to travel abroad before setting off.”
Methodology

• com sought to determine which European road trips could be considered the most romantic.
• Utilising the TomTom Route Planner⁽¹⁾, predetermined road trips could be analysed for the study.
• To focus the study, a seed list was generated of famous road trips from a variety of reliable sources including CNN Travel⁽²⁾, FindingTheUniverse.com⁽³⁾, FlightCentre⁽⁴⁾ and CNTraveler⁽⁵⁾. Trips from the seed list that were available on the TomTom Route Planner were selected for analysis.
• To ensure data was reliable, only road trips that had been uploaded by TomTom were chosen for the study.
• To determine which trips were the most romantic, each route had reviews for 20 hotels and restaurants scraped, to find those that were most commonly described as “romantic” alongside a series of synonymous keywords. In the scenario there were more than 20 hotels or restaurants along the route (the vast majority), we selected venues along each route, focusing on trying to get an even distribution from each “checkpoint” in the route. These checkpoints are major stops along the route and are predetermined in the TomTom route planner, and we would aim to select those that had the most overall reviews. If there were not 20 venues along the route, we would expand to include any within a 5km radius.
• The study was focussed further by searching for the following keywords: “romantic,” “beautiful,” “lovely,” “cozy,” “cute” and “charming”.
• Keywords were translated for venues where the reviews were written in another language.
• The reviews that included any romantic keywords were counted alongside the total reviews in all languages. Both figures were used to find the percentage of reviews that used romantic keywords for each venue. This percentage became the “romance percentage.”
• A weighted average was taken of each route’s 20 venues’ romance percentages based on the proportion of reviews each venue has. This means venues with more reviews will contribute more to the overall average than venues with less reviews. This resulted in an overall romance percentage value for each route overall.
• A percentrank.exc was then applied to resulting weighted averages to produce a ranked score for each route. This displayed where each route sat in the distribution of each route’s average percentage.
• Routes were subsequently ranked by these values, those with the highest percent rank ranking highest are determined to be the most romantic.
• Scores were calculated on 18/01/2022 and are subject to change.