The fall travel season is officially here, and over half of travelers plan to manage the cost of their trips by cutting back on other expenses, according to Hopper. Hopper lead economist Hayley Berg joins Wealth! to break down her top travel tips for the 2024 fall and holiday seasons/
Berg notes that travelers should book their travel by October 14, when consumers can get the best airfare prices on their holiday travel. She adds that prices for holiday travel increase after Halloween.
She also encourages travelers to be flexible with their travel dates, explaining that you can save about $200 per domestic ticket just by being flexible around your Thanksgiving and Christmas travel dates. While these holidays are the cheapest travel days, she explains that Monday or Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and Monday before Christmas Eve are the other cheapest times to fly.
While the holiday season usually sees more delays, Berg recommends you buy disruption assistance when purchasing tickets. This way, if your flight is delayed or canceled, you can rebook the next available flight without incurring any additional costs. If possible, she also encourages planning a buffer day in your travels in case of any disruptions.
Travel Deal Tuesday — Tuesday, December 3 — lies right around the corner, and Berg explains that it’s the best day in the post-Thanksgiving holiday season to secure a great travel deal.
“We typically see 8,000 routes on sale from airlines. We see hotel discounts. So if you don’t book your Christmas travel now, or you’re already starting to think about your 2025 travel, Travel Deal Tuesday is a good day to put in your calendar because you can get incredible deals on either those last-minute holiday trips or maybe some warm weather destinations in early 2025,” she tells Yahoo Finance.
For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Wealth!
This post was written by Melanie Riehl
Video Transcript
We’re in the fall travel season.
Millions of Americans are considering how they will spend the holidays this year.
According to the latest data from Hopper, half of travelers plan to manage the cost of their trips by cutting back on other expenses.
So we wanna help you out and bring on the experts to discuss how to save money on your Thanksgiving, Christmas and overall holiday travel here with more.
We’ve got Haley Beg, who’s the lead economist over at Hopper Haley?
Great to have you here for us.
A very festivous time of year.
Uh Let’s dive into some of the money saving hacks here starting with the date that people should book their holiday travel by.
What, what should I be marking off on my calendar?
You should be marking off October 14th, mid October is what we’re going to see the best prices for airfare on both Thanksgiving and Christmas.
And that’s an important thing to note.
Don’t just book your Thanksgiving trips in October.
You also need to book your Christmas trips.
Prices for both holidays start to rise as soon as we at Halloween.
I know Hopper has this, this feature and I I’m not sure how many other uh booking platforms or, or platforms as a whole have this feature but trying to lock in a price if you’re not ready to book, how, how can people kind of take advantage of that and, and make sure that they’re spending within their budget as they’re booking holiday travel.
Listen, we’ve all been there, we see a great price but maybe our PTO hasn’t been approved.
We need to confirm with friends, family.
You can use something like Hopper’s price freeze tool.
You pay a small fee when you see that flight, that’s at the right price and you lock in the price where it is, you can book at that price at a later date.
It gives you some breathing room so you can arrange your plans and if the price increases, Hopper covers the price difference, if the price goes down, you pay the lower price.
And so one of the th one of the three things that we’re kind of looking across the, the the hacks, they, they seem crucial here being flexible on your travel days.
How, how flexible do people need to be and what are the best days to travel when it comes to this time of year?
You can save about $200 per domestic airline ticket just by being flexible on the days that you travel for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Now, unfortunately, the cheapest days to fly are the holidays themselves, Thanksgiving day, Christmas Eve.
Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve.
But if you don’t have the flexibility to travel on the day of holiday, your best bet is skip that Saturday to Saturday, Sunday to Sunday trip and try to fly Monday or Wednesday before Thanksgiving or Monday before Christmas Eve.
So if you have some flexibility, it’s a great way to save.
If not just avoid that Sunday return after Thanksgiving and avoid returning on the 27th or the 28th of December.
Those are gonna be the most expensive travel dates.
All right, oversold flights, crying babies, perhaps a furry friend that you might see somewhere going through ts a cat or dog who knows.
Hopefully one of those two, you also have hacks though, ultimately about planning for disruptions.
How important is that?
And what type of cushion should people be putting into their overall travel experience when we survey travelers at Hopper, what we hear all the time is one of the biggest financial challenges to travel is actually unexpected disruptions.
It’s a hotel room, they didn’t expect it’s extra meals at the airport disruptions are a reality when you’re flying and they are worse during the holiday season.
We recommend adding services like disruption assistance.
It’s offered on Hopper, other travel providers like capital one travel Flair Airlines.
If your flights delayed or canceled, you can immediately rebook on the next available flight regardless of the carrier and we cover the cost so you’re not out of pocket you just get on to your destination as quickly as possible.
Add disruption assistance, build in a buffer day if you’re going to a wedding or a special holiday event, make sure you add a buffer day in just in case of disruptions.
Ok.
I’ve heard of uh I’ve heard of small business Saturday.
I’ve heard of, of course, Black Friday, we’ve all heard of Cyber Monday.
But what is Travel day Tuesday?
Like is this new?
It feels like we just keep coming up with new days.
What is it and how can consumers take advantage of it?
Travel deal?
Tuesday is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving this year.
It’s Tuesday, December 3rd and it’s the best day of that post Thanksgiving holiday season to get good deals on travel, on flights, hotels, rental cars, everything we typically see, you know, 8000 routes on, on sale from airlines.
We see hotel discounts.
So if you don’t book your Christmas travel now or you’re already starting to think about your 2025 travel travel until Tuesday is a good day to put in your calendar because you can get incredible deals on either those last minute holiday trips or maybe some warm weather destinations in early 2025.
All travel deal Tuesday.
We’ll combine it with giving Tuesday.
We’ll cover the philanthropic and we’ll cover the travel side as well.
Haley Berg lead economist over at Hopper Haley.
Always a pleasure to grab some time.
Great to be with you Brad.
Thanks.