diff --git a/homeassistant/components/sensor/waze_travel_time.py b/homeassistant/components/sensor/waze_travel_time.py
index 83b4f3ad934..96a4c747293 100644
--- a/homeassistant/components/sensor/waze_travel_time.py
+++ b/homeassistant/components/sensor/waze_travel_time.py
@@ -218,7 +218,6 @@ class WazeTravelTime(Entity):
 
                 route = sorted(routes, key=(lambda key: routes[key][0]))[0]
                 duration, distance = routes[route]
-                route = bytes(route, 'ISO-8859-1').decode('UTF-8')
                 self._state = {
                     'duration': duration,
                     'distance': distance,