Romance Stories Get It Right
Romance Tropes #3
For many of us, holiday travel is a mixture of excitement and anxiety. We look forward to seeing family and friends, but there's always the possibility of delayed flights, missed connections, traffic jams, lost luggage or unexpected detours.
For romance writers, however, all that travel chaos is the perfect recipe for love.
The Christmas and New Year season creates a unique backdrop because people aren't simply travelling from one place to another—they're travelling with emotion. They may be returning home for the first time in years, meeting a partner's family, attending a wedding, or starting over after a difficult season. Everyone has a story, making it believable that two strangers might strike up a conversation while waiting for a delayed flight or sharing an airport lounge.
Travel disruptions also create some of romance's most-loved tropes. A cancelled flight can leave two strangers stranded overnight. A snowstorm forces people to share accommodation. A missed connection turns into an unexpected road trip. Suddenly, characters who would never have met are spending hours—or even days—together, giving relationships time to develop naturally.
Films have embraced this idea for years. Love at First Sight begins with a missed flight that leads to a chance meeting and a life-changing romance. Holiday Road turns cancelled Christmas flights into an unforgettable cross-country adventure, while What Happens Later reunites former lovers when bad weather leaves them stranded in the same airport overnight. Even The Holiday reminds us that simply stepping outside our normal routine can open the door to unexpected love.
Perhaps that's why readers enjoy these stories so much. Most of us have wondered about the strangers we've briefly met while travelling. What if we'd started a conversation? What if one small delay had changed the course of our lives?
Holiday travel romances invite us to believe that life's greatest detours might lead us exactly where we're meant to be. In fiction, the missed flight isn't a disaster—it's the beginning of the happily ever after.