Many Americans are waiting longer to book summer vacations this year. Here's why.
Show Caption
Hide Caption
Top three travel trends for summer 2025
Airbnb shares data behind the top summer destinations and motivators for 2025.
NEW YORK - This year's hottest summer travel trend? Waiting for deals.
Americans are scaling back travel plans from flights to drives or waiting to book only if the price is right, a tell-tale sign of an industry slowdown that's got travel companies worried.
Hotel summer bookings are either flat or falling from last year, and airline bookings are down even though airfares have also declined, as economic concerns fuel a pullback in spending.
Travel companies including Delta Air Lines, Marriott International, and online travel agency Booking Holdings have withdrawn or revised their 2025 annual forecasts as U.S. demand softens. Airbnb flagged shrinking booking windows as consumers take a "wait-and-see" approach and book trips closer to their check-in dates.
That has left companies with less visibility into the second half of the year. Delta said in early April it was premature to project the full year given macroeconomic uncertainty. United Airlines said there's a reasonable chance that bookings could weaken.
Europe travel deals: United Airlines says now's the time to book cheap flights from Newark
Wait and see
"It's very clear that consumers are waiting to make decisions, including for the summer," Southwest Airlines CEO Robert Jordan said at the Bernstein Annual Strategic Decisions Conference in late May, adding that demand was stable but lower than expected in January.
U.S. summer flight bookings are down 10% year-over-year, according to Flighthub, an online travel agency, even though airfares have dropped.
"You can't keep an airline seat on the shelf in a warehouse. If you don't fill that seat tomorrow and the airplane flies, it's gone," Steve Hafner, CEO of Kayak, a Booking Holdings unit, told Reuters.
Average summer flight prices declined 7%, with flights to long-haul destinations like Sydney, Australia 23% cheaper year-over-year, according to Kayak.
Hotel bookings have "actually fallen off and it gets weaker like a month out," Hyatt Hotels CEO Mark Hoplamazian told an audience at the NYU International Hospitality Investment Forum on Tuesday. "By the time you get to that month, it recovers."
Summer bookings in major U.S. cities are flat-to-down year-over-year, according to data from CoStar. Average room rates are expected to rise roughly 1.3% in 2025, down from a 1.8% increase in 2024.
"We're not getting that crazy pricing power we got in the early days of the recovery," Marriott CEO Anthony Capuano said, adding that the company was still seeing revenue per available room increase.
Weaker dollar
Travelers may start to find deals, such as a free third night for staying two nights, as hoteliers look to fill rooms, said Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality analytics at CoStar Group.
That's what Jackie Lafferty is hoping for. Her summer plans have shifted from a possible family vacation in Hawaii or Florida to her home state of California instead.
"By the time we broke down the cost of the flights, the hotel and the rental car, it looked expensive, it felt unreasonable," said Lafferty, a Los Angeles-based public relations director.
The dollar's weakness has driven up the cost of overseas vacations. In March, American travelers surveyed by Deloitte had planned to increase budgets for their longest summer trip by 13%. By April, Deloitte's survey found Americans planned on spending about the same as last year.
"The dollar is just not going as far and I think people are starting to realize that," said Chirag Panchal, CEO of the Ensuite Collection, a Dallas luxury travel concierge. The dollar has fallen about 10% since mid-January, when it was its strongest in more than two years.
Panchal's clients, who had booked big trips to Europe last year, are either staying domestic or going to closer destinations like Canada or the Caribbean.
"We might go international at the end of the summer. If we do, it will be last-minute and spur of the moment based on cheaper flights," said Rachel Cabeza, 28, an actor and fitness instructor based in New Jersey. For now, her only summer plan is a getaway to Martha's Vineyard in nearby Massachusetts.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
39 minutes ago
- USA Today
Do you need $1 million to be financially 'comfortable'? Answers here.
You don't need a million dollars to be financially comfortable. A little over $800,000 will do. That's the takeaway from the new Modern Wealth Survey by Charles Schwab. It may be mostly a matter of semantics, but American consumers see a big difference between the financial goals of comfort and wealth: A nearly $1.5 million difference, to be exact. Whatever else 'wealthy' might mean in 2025, numerous surveys attest, it definitely means having a net worth over $1 million. In the latest annual Schwab survey, released in July, consumers set the wealth bar at $2.3 million. But how much money does it take to be merely 'comfortable'? In four past surveys, consumers equated financial comfort to a net worth between $624,000 and $1 million. (The $1 million figure came in 2023, a year of rampant inflation.) This year's number: $839,000. What's the difference between 'comfort' and 'wealth'? What, then, is the difference between comfort and wealth? The Schwab survey didn't define the terms. Respondents were left to decide on their own. To Rob Williams, managing director of financial planning at Schwab, the distinction boils down to needs, wants and wishes. To many American consumers, Williams said, financial comfort means having enough net worth to meet their needs and wants. 'I can pay my mortgage. I have a home. I can pay my medical bills. I don't have to go paycheck to paycheck. I have enough to retire,' Williams said. 'That's what financial comfort means to me.' To be wealthy, he said, means you have enough money to satisfy your needs and wants, and also your wishes. 'Wishes are those things that are aspirational,' he said: Having enough money to retire when you want, or to vacation where and when you please. 'I think of wealth as, 'I have a lot more choices in how I use my time,'' Williams said. Here's how Americans define 'wealthy' Schwab asked survey respondents to define what wealthy means to them. Here, in descending order, are the most-cited factors: Is financial 'comfort' more dream than reality? Only 11% of consumers said they believe they are wealthy now: evidence, perhaps, that wealth is largely aspirational. Another 24% said they think they are on track to be wealthy. Gen Z and millennials were especially optimistic about wealth. More than two-fifths of both groups reported being either wealthy or on track to become so. Financial comfort, too, seems to be more of a dream than a reality. In the Schwab survey, only 20% of respondents reported feeling comfortable now. Another 28% said they're on track to achieve that status. Here, again, Gen Z and millennial Americans voiced more optimism, with more than half of each group saying they are financially comfortable, or getting there. The Schwab survey, conducted in April and May, reached a representative sample of 2,200 adults. Most American households are not particularly wealthy A net worth of $839,000, the cutoff for financial comfort in the Schwab survey, actually falls below the average net worth for American families in 2022, which was roughly $1.1 million, according to the federal Survey of Consumer Finances. But the super-wealthy skew that average. The median household net worth – think of it as the middle figure in a long list of numbers – is only $192,700. Lili Vasileff, a certified financial planner in Greenwich, Connecticut, defines financial comfort as essentially never having to worry about money. 'Comfortable, to me, means that I can meet my bills every day of the week, that I don't live paycheck to paycheck, that I have savings set aside as an emergency fund, and that I have made good progress toward achieving my financial goals,' she said. Being wealthy, she said, is about financial freedom and loftier goals. 'Wealthy, to me, means that I have savings that I don't need to dip into, and I can create a legacy for my children, that I have the ability to have a little more ego in terms of the quality of things that I want,' she said. 'You may feel like you're really comfortable at $800,000,' Vasileff said. But a lot depends on how much of the money is liquid, how much is investable, and how much is earmarked for spending, among other factors. The role of financial wellness Robert Brokamp, a senior adviser at The Motley Fool, defines financial comfort in much the same way the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau defines financial well-being. It's a four-part definition: 'I think anyone who meets those criteria, they're comfortable,' Brokamp said. Brokamp also has a theory to explain the $2.3 million figure that Schwab survey-takers defined as 'wealthy' in 2025. It has to do with the faded luster of the American millionaire. 'If you're a millionaire, you're more than comfortable,' Brokamp said. 'But there's still this idea that being a millionaire ain't what it used to be.' Brokamp thinks that impulse may explain why the annual Schwab surveys consistently define 'wealthy' as a figure closer to $2 million: $2.2 million in 2022 and 2023, and $2.5 million in 2024. 'If you've got $2 million, you're a multimillionaire,' he said. 'And if you're a multimillionaire, you've got to be wealthy.'
USA Today
2 hours ago
- USA Today
Men don't like how Trump treats the economy. Democrats must cash in on that.
Democrats are being given an opportunity to fix their messaging with Americans who are quickly turning on President Donald Trump. According to new polling, American men are beginning to lose faith in President Donald Trump. It took them long enough, but I'm glad they're here with the rest of us. A CBS News/YouGov poll showed that the president's approval rating among men had dropped to 47%, while 53% disapproved of the job he was doing. It's a stark contrast from the November election, when Trump won male voters by 55%. It's a troubling sign for Republicans, but an opportunity for Democrats to gain ground with male voters before 2026. While men tend to go for the GOP, there is a possibility that Trump continues to alienate them by continuing to torpedo the economy and making irrational decisions when it comes to foreign policy and immigration. Can Democrats fix their messaging? The big issue for men? How Trump handles the economy. Men are particularly upset by Trump's handling of the economy. According to the CBS News/YouGov poll, 49% of men say the economy is getting worse, and 59% disapprove of how he's handling inflation. Sixty percent of men think he's focusing too much on tariffs, while 65% say he isn't doing enough to lower the cost of goods and services. Opinion: MAGA, I feel bad Trump lied to you about the Epstein list. Who saw this coming? Democrats, who tend to have weaker messaging on the economy, should take these criticisms and run with them. The cost of tariffs is likely to be passed on to the consumer. The nation's gross domestic product just declined for the first time in three years. Inflation may be cooling, but prices aren't falling. By putting the blame on Trump for the economic strife Americans are feeling, the Democratic Party could potentially show men that Republican lawmakers may not be the ones to rely on when it comes to their finances. When the rest of us know that was always the case. Men are also dissatisfied with the conflict in Gaza, and immigration While 55% of men say the economy and inflation are critical in how they view the president, there are some issues where Trump is also beginning to lose favor. For example, 53% of men say they are dissatisfied with the Trump administration's handling of the Israel-Hamas war, which the president said he'd end on the campaign trail. Fifty-one percent disapprove of his interactions with Iran. Fifty percent of men disapprove of how Trump is handling immigration, with 47% saying the administration is deporting more immigrants than they believed it would, according to that same poll. All of these concerns are corroborated by other polls that show Trump is widely disliked. This should be a wake-up call that Democrats need to strengthen their message on the Israel-Hamas war, at least advocating for peace talks. They could also combine immigration with economic issues, and stress how Trump's deportation agenda could negatively affect the GDP and increase the cost of food. Opinion: Trump keeps brutalizing immigrants because he's failing at everything else Gen Z is particularly unhappy Generation Z, born between 1997 to 2012, also seems to have woken up to Trump's failures. The CBS News/YouGov poll found that his approval rating among 18- to 29-year-olds plummeted to 28% in July. Seventy-one percent of those under 30 disapprove of Trump's handling of the economy, and 73% disapprove of how he's handling inflation. As with men, it's a far cry from how Gen Z felt about Trump in the 2024 election, when voters ages 18-29 supported Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris by a much smaller margin than they supported former President Joe Biden in 2020. Among this age group, 56% of males voted for Trump, 1 percentage point more than among all male voters. Opinion: Trump is unpopular, polls show, and he's building an America most Americans hate It's telling that the generation whose perception of the Republican Party is entirely shaped by the rise of Trump is suddenly souring on him. Perhaps people around my age are finally realizing that targeting marginalized communities won't actually improve their quality of life, or that Trump made promises he couldn't keep. They might also be realizing that the positive emotions they felt during the first Trump administration can be chalked up to childhood nostalgia. For those of us in the generation who were old enough to vote in 2016, the negatives of Trump's first presidency were unavoidable. Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store. If the Democrats are clever, they'll consider this polling and begin brainstorming ways to further drive a wedge between Trump and male voters, particularly those in Gen Z. Yet I'm not sure Democrats are prepared to pick up the young voters Republicans are siphoning off. Their solution now seems to be doing nothing – Democratic leadership essentially disappeared after the 2024 election, and no one seems to know how to get the party back on track. Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, they need to focus on more than podcasts and memes. They need to be working on crafting a populist message and focusing on economic issues, because that seems to be the deciding factor in whether or not a president is doing well. Follow USA TODAY columnist Sara Pequeño on X, formerly Twitter: @sara__pequeno You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter.
3 hours ago
The reverse migration: African Americans relocating to Kenya cite heritage and restoration
NAIROBI, Kenya -- Kenneth Harris spent most of his days in Atlanta yearning for a life in a place where his dark skin color is not a source of suspicion, but a mark of a shared heritage. His chance came two years ago when he bought a one-way ticket to Kenya. The 38-year-old retired veteran has found a community in the east African country's capital, where he now runs an Airbnb business. He loves admiring Nairobi's golden sunset from a rooftop terrace, and enjoys a luxurious lifestyle in a tastefully furnished apartment in an upmarket neighborhood. Harris is part of a growing wave of African Americans who are relocating to Kenya, citing the need to connect with their ancestors — or 'coming home," a phrase often used among the Black community. Like dozens of other African Americans who have moved to Nairobi in recent years, Harris was attracted to Kenya's tropical climate and what he describes as the warmth and friendliness of the people he believes he shares a history and culture with. 'I have always had that adventurous spirit, especially when I joined the military and got to go to different countries. So I am taking the opportunity to venture out to new places," he said. 'That is what allowed me to make a home away from home and Kenya is my new home.' Some friends have reaching out to him to explore a 'change from the U.S for their peace of mind,' he said. Several other African Americans who have 'come home' like him have set up thriving businesses in Nairobi that include travel agencies, restaurants and farms. Many African Americans who have sought a better life abroad or are considering it said President Donald Trump's administration — with its crackdown on diversity programs — isn't the main reason they want to move. Rather, most say they had been mulling a move for some time, and the current political environment in the U.S. may be pushing them to act sooner than initially planned. 'I can't say the administration is the reason why the people I know want to part ways from America. Some are planning to move for a better quality of living life,' Harris said. Auston Holleman, an American YouTuber who has lived in various countries for almost a decade, said he settled on Kenya nine months ago because people 'look like me.' 'It is not like going to Europe or going to some Latin American countries where there are not many Black people,' he said. Holleman, who often films his daily life, said he felt that the social fabric in the U.S. was 'broken." In contrast, he said he felt socially accepted in Kenya. He cited an experience when his taxi driver's car stopped, and in five minutes they got help from a random stranger. 'That made me realize I was in the right place,' he said. Other African countries have attracted even larger numbers of African Americans. Ghana, which launched a 'Year of the Return' program to attract the Black diaspora in 2019, said last year it held a ceremony that granted citizenship to 524 people, mostly Black Americans. African American businesses such as Adilah Relocation Services have seen a notable rise in the number of African Americans seeking to move to Kenya. The company's founder, Adilah Mohammad, moved to Kenya four days after her mother's funeral in search of healing. She says the peace and restoration she experienced in Kenya made her stay — and advocate for those searching for the same. Her company helps clients relocate by house hunting, shopping for furniture and ensuring banking and medical services are seamless. 'There are 15 families that have come so far, and we have five more on the calendar that are coming in the next 90 days. We have people that have booked for 2026 with no date, they just know that they are leaving,' she says. Mohammad said many African Americans have been planning their move for decades. 'For me it is a movement. It is people deciding to make a choice for themselves, they are not being forced, shackles are being broken. When they say they are coming home, they are choosing to be free and it is mental freedom and so I am ecstatic,' she says. Experts say African economies are likely to benefit from these moves, especially from those willing to tackle corruption and create a healthy environment for investors. Raphael Obonyo, a public policy expert at U.N-Habitat, says the U.S is losing resources — as well as the popular narrative that America is the land of opportunities and dreams. 'This reverse migration is denting that narrative, so America is most likely to lose including things like brain drain,' he explained. For Mohammad, the sense of belonging has given her peace within. 'I love being here. Returning to Africa is one thing, but finding the place that you feel like you belong is another,' she said.
