holiday travel

Holiday travelers need more dough

Holidays

This is a slightly different version of a story we wrote for NBC News online.

Traveling for the holidays this year? The answer increasingly depends on your paycheck. 

Households earning at least six figures a year are expected to make up the largest share of holiday travelers this season — 45%, up from 38% in 2023, according to a recent survey by the consulting firm Deloitte. And they’re on track to make up a majority of paid lodging customers, expanding their ranks as hotel guests from 43% last season to 52% now.

“Travelers are looking to invest in upgrades and experiences that will make the holiday memorable,” said Kate Ferrara, vice chair for U.S. transportation, hospitality and services at Deloitte.

But that’s partly a reflection of who’s traveling in the first place.

While richer people are expanding their footprint in the holiday travel mix, lower-paid ones are shrinking theirs: Households making under $50,000 are set to make up just 23% of travelers, down from 28% a year ago, Deloitte found. (The median U.S. income was about $80,600 a year, according to the latest Census data.)

It’s another sign of what Jan Freitag, national director for hospitality market analytics at the real-estate data firm CoStar, calls the “wealth effect” rippling across the consumer economy.

“Continued higher stock and home prices make higher-end households ‘feel’ wealthier,” he said, “and so they are taking this festive season as another reason to treat themselves.” The trend helps explain why racial disparities in net worth have widened during the recovery from the pandemic, even as certain income gaps have narrowed.

It also helps explain why airlines and hotel operators have wasted no time chasing affluent customers’ disposable dollars — dangling an ever-expanding slate of luxury packages and prompts to upgrade, which have become unmissable for anyone booking a trip in recent years.

Travel brands have “done a great job since Covid of attracting these types of customers by adapting their products to this ‘premium leisure’ segment,” said Jonathan Kletzel, a travel, transportation and logistics leader for the auditing firm PwC.

Indeed, the luxury travel network Virtuoso said it’s seen seasonal bookings surge 37% since last year among its high-end clientele. Nightly rates for ritzy hotels during the holidays are up 6%, at just over $2,000 per night. Some of the most popular holiday destinations, including high-end resorts in Mexico and the Caribbean, have risen even more steeply — by about 8%, with rooms now going for over $3,000 a night.

Domestic airfares for the week of Christmas this year are averaging $352 round-trip, 9% more than last year, according to the booking site Hopper. And round-trip tickets to Europe for the week of Christmas are averaging $1,207, a whopping 33% jump from last year.

It isn’t just the ultrarich splashing out on top-tier travel and driving up prices for everyone else. Consumers overall “are more willing to pull back on goods than on experiences,” said Misty Belles, vice president for global public relations at Virtuoso. But even while they prioritize things like travel, many consumers “are also looking for value for money, and they fully expect service levels to reflect the prices they’re paying,” she added.

But while post-pandemic travel demand continues to rise, many are finding ways to venture out without spending more.

Some 64% of Americans plan to take more than one trip this holiday season, Deloitte found, up from 57% in 2023. And 28% plan to significantly increase their budgets for their longest trip, up from just 18% last year. At the same time, PwC found a big jump in travelers planning to stay with family and friends over the holidays — 56% this year versus 45% last — and falling interest in booking name-brand hotels (39%, down from 46%).

“These travel choices may suggest that people are looking to save money, likely choosing cheaper options to keep their travel costs down,” the researchers wrote.

Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst for Bankrate, said there are signs that “inflation continues to strain holiday travelers in a big way.” The consumer finance company found 86% of households making less than $100,000 annually expect to change their holiday travel plans due to cost increases (although a hefty 77% of six-figure earners said the same).

Bankrate found 29% of travelers expect to take on debt to fund their travels this season. That includes 22% who plan to carry a credit card balance, and 10% who plan to use “buy now, pay later” services.

“They don’t want to skip the trip entirely, but they’re willing to cut some corners to save money,” said Rossman.

Thanksgiving Travel Tips So You’re Not the Turkey

Holidays,

A few years back, during the pandemic, if you traveled during Thanksgiving you were required to wear a mask and stay at least 6 feet away from other travelers.

A distance San Jose Mineta International Airport (SJC) had measured out as being equivalent to the length of two turkeys.

You may encounter some different types of turkeys during your Thanksgiving travels this year. But here are tips that may help your trip go smoothly – or as smoothly as possible.

Weather, labor actions, inexperienced and flustered travelers, mechanical or tech glitches, construction on the way to the airport and traffic are just some of the things that may get between you and the flight that will bring you to your friends and family over the holiday.

Some of it is out of your control. But there are things you can do to try to keep mayhem and missed flights out of your itinerary.

1. Check your flight times. Download AND print out your boarding pass.

Even the most experienced travelers misread or ‘misremember’ their flight’s departure time.

When you go online to check to in for your flight, be sure to download an electronic boarding pass and, for good measure, print out a paper copy of the boarding pass. Then, on the paper version, highlight the boarding time, just in case.

Plan to arrive at the airport early. Extra early.

Airports and airlines aren’t kidding. You should show up at the airport (not leave for the airport….) at least two hours before your flight. Or more.

Showing up early means you won’t be (as) stressed if you encounter a very long line at the Transportation Security Checkpoint. And don’t assume your TSA Precheck will let you get through super fast. At many airports, those lines get very long too, especially this time of year.

Download some apps

Download the app for all the airports on your itinerary, your airline app and the app for your hotel and rental car company.

The airline app will help you stay on top of any gate, schedule and flight changes as well as other details of your journey.

The airport apps offer maps to help you make your connections as well as lists and locations of shops, restaurants and other amenities in the terminals, such as art exhibits.

Many airport apps also have real-time data that tells you how long the wait time is at various TSA checkpoints so you may be be able to to go to an alternate checkpoint to save some time.

Make a reservation to go through airport security.

There’s a free, ‘secret’ way to bypass those lines at about 20 airports in North America and Europe.

For travelers without paid memberships in TSA PreCheck or CLEAR, there’s a free virtual cueing program at select airports.

It’s like a restaurant reservation. And it lets you bypass others waiting in line at the airport security line.

The service go by different names at various airports, but is the free Clear RESERVE program managed by CLEAR, the company that also runs the paid Clear Plus program that uses fingerprints or eye scans to expedite your checkpoint journey.

As of December 2024, free timed security checkpoint reservations are being offered at 17 airports in North America and Europe, including Denver (DEN), Minneapolis (MSP), Seattle (SEA), Phoenix (PHX) and Orlando (MCO).

Bring some Mad Money

No matter how well you plan, traveling during the busy holiday season can be stressful. Tuck a little cash in your wallet to buy yourself a decadent snack, a cocktail or a trinket in case you find yourself stuck at the airport.

Skip the North Pole. Go to the airport.

Holidays

A record number of travelers are getting to their holiday gatherings by air this year. So airports are having fun bringing some of the North Pole into the terminals.

Here’s some merry.

What to expect for holiday travel

Holidays, , , , , ,

(This is a shortened version of a story we first wrote for NBC News)

This year’s post-pandemic travel boom is continuing into the holidays.

Nearly half (48%) of Americans plan to travel between Thanksgiving and mid-January, up from 31% last winter, a recent Deloitte survey found.

AAA expects 55.4 million travelers to venture at least 50 miles from home during the Thanksgiving period alone, a 2.3% increase from last year.

That means if you’re hitting the roads or the slopes this season, you’ll have lots of company. Here’s what to expect as you pack your bags for a winter getaway.

More affordable airfare

Airline ticket prices are falling even as more Americans intend to fly.

Deloitte found that 33% of holiday travelers plan to take a domestic flight, up from 29% last year. Despite the strong demand, airfares were more than 13% cheaper last month than at the same time a year ago, federal inflation data shows.

Smoother flights?

Airlines and aviation officials sound confident about handling the holiday crush. While major U.S. carriers — including American, Delta, and United — expect record passenger numbers this Thanksgiving, many are touting their readiness for the season.

Track records for flight cancellations and missing luggage have improved ahead of the holidays. About 1.7% of flights were canceled during the first eight months of this year. That’s much better than the 3.0% rate for the same eight-month period last year and 2.3% in the comparable stretch of 2019, the Department of Transportation reported.

And in August, the latest month with available data, the mishandled baggage rate dropped to 0.61% from 0.75% the month before.

A broader push to streamline and automate operations “will continue to help curb mishandling as we approach the holiday season,” said Nicole Hogg, head of baggage for SITA, an air transport IT company. But travel experts still suggest adding an AirTag or other digital tracking device to your luggage, especially during busy travel periods.

“Mother Nature will cause some number of cancellations, guaranteed,” said Scott Keyes, the founder of the airfare tracking site Going. But he noted that “cancellations caused by the airlines — the most galling for travelers — are at multiyear lows” and added that many carriers have bulked up on pilots, planes, and staff.

“The entire industry was snakebit from last year’s debacle,” Keyes said, “and airlines have adjusted their operations accordingly.”

Pricier hotel rooms

More holiday travelers plan to stay in hotels this holiday season instead of bunking with friends or family. Deloitte found that 56% plan to stay in hotels, a sharp jump from 35% in 2022.

That could push up room rates, which were already 0.8% pricier in October than the year before.

Jan Freitag, director of hospitality analytics at the commercial real-estate research company CoStar, said this season’s strong travel numbers will likely nudge Christmastime room rates above last year’s levels. In the first full week of November, they were up 4% in the U.S. from the same week a year ago, averaging $156 per night, CoStar said.

Price-conscious Christmas travelers might want to “book early to lock in lower rates, shorten their trips or trade down to a different class of service,” said Freitag, or else take their chances with last-minute reservations. Inventories will be slimmer in the eleventh hour, but hotels may still cut prices on unsold rooms.

Santa arrived. Many other flyers didn’t.

Airlines, ,

No doubt about it.

For everyone except Santa and his reindeer, flying this holiday has been a mess.

There’s so much snow in upstate New York that Buffalo Niagara International Airport (BUF) is staying closed until at least 11 a.m. on Wednesday, December 28.

And the airport’s award-winning snow removal team is so overwhelmed with snow that is has called on other airports to help them deal with this blizzard.

“Our crews are working around the clock and @PITairport will be sending additional snow plowing equipment to assist our team,” the airport shared in a Tweet.

Southwest Airlines Meltown

Thousands of flights have been canceled and all airlines are having a tough time getting passengers and their suitcases from here to there.

But Southwest Airlines operations seem to have broken down – or frozen up – completely.

At 1 am Tuesday morning, FlightAware.com was showing more than 2,600 cancellations within, into, or out of the United States, with most of those being on Southwest Airlines alone.

The airline cancelled more than 2900 flights on Monday and has already canceled 2460 flights for Tuesday.

The next few days may get even worse.

In a media release late Monday, Southwest said, “With consecutive days of extreme winter weather across our network behind us, continuing challenges are impacting our Customers and Employees in a significant way that is unacceptable.”

The airline said “our heartfelt apologies for this are just beginning.” But it added: “As we continue the work to recover our operation, we have made the decision to continue operating a reduced schedule by flying roughly one third of our schedule for the next several days.”

But it may be more serious than that.

Tweets like this were shared Tuesday night from cities all over the country confirming that Southwest customers are being told no flights will be rebooked until after December 31.

As in “next year.”

That means that a lot of people whose flights have already been canceled are going to have to wait even longer to get on a plane.

The Department of Transportation has taken notice, calling Southwest’s rate of cancellations and delays and report of poor customer service “unacceptable” and saying it “will examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan.”