Vehicular Delay Tolerant Network (VDTN) routing is referred to the hybridization of Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) with VANETs which mobilizes both knowledge-based and geography-based forwarding techniques. Numerous shortage are stated in existing VDTN routing protocols in both modes exposes such as the inaccurate location information and uncontrolled congestion due to bundles flooding. In this paper, we introduce a hybrid VDTN routing strategy combining a swarm-inspired algorithm, namely the Firefly Algorithm (FA) to enhance the decision-making of finding better next Store-Carry-and-Forward (SCF) relay vehicle in accordance with the use of geographical forwarding for better localization of closer nodes to the destination. Thus, the flooding of bundles is controlled by the movement of fireflies in early routing stages, then a reliable geographic routing is followed to better track closer SCF vehicles toward bundle’s destination. We implement our approach using the Opportunistic Network Environment (ONE) simulator and compare it with few common DTN routers, namely Spray-and-Wait (SnW), ProPHET and Epidemic (ER) routers; the simulation results shows superior balance between average delivery delays and delivery probability with a reasonable overheads ratio and flooding levels.