Date night: How India dined on Valentine’s Day

For urban India, Valentine’s Day has now cemented itself as a major holiday. Numbers and trends from this year show that big cities went all out for the celebration over the February 14 weekend. Social media was abuzz with videos of people waiting in long lines to get into restaurants and the industry pulled out all the stops to attract customers.

Not just the big cities

Swiggy’s reservation platform Dineout shared data post V-Day. As one would imagine, metropolitan centres like Bengaluru, New Delhi, and Hyderabad remained the epicentre with highest bookings in the country. But that was not the only place where couples went out for dates. Emerging cities like Ahmedabad, Jaipur, and Chandigarh recorded a high number of bookings. Bookings in cities like Surat (180%), Vadodara (155%) and Bhubaneswar (145.5%) recorded the highest growth as compared to the previous Saturday (February 7, 2026).

One diner in Mumbai billed the restaurant of a whopping ₹1,30,155 through the Dineout platform. One restaurant in Mumbai saw a group of 30 dining together.

Curated experiences

The platform shared that pubs, bars and lounges made up 30.6% of online reservations and bookings. Fine dining witnessed a 121% growth compared to last year, signaling a growing preference towards premium, curated experiences during these special occasions.

But we are not getting any better planning ahead: 66 per cent of the reservations were made just two hours before heading out for dinner.