Exploring Fall Shoulder Season Travel: A Comprehensive Guide

As summer winds down, you might have missed out on doing some well-deserved travel. It’s not too late, or if you’re just itching to get away again, it might be a good time to start looking. We’re amidst the fall shoulder season, a perfect period for travel. To break down exactly what that is, we’ve got Haley Ber, the Hopper Lead Economist, here with us.

What is Fall Shoulder Season?

The shoulder season is the period of time between peak summer vacation travel months—think June, July, August—and the holiday season starting halfway through November and going all the way through to the end of the year. This shoulder period, mostly September, October, and maybe the first or second week of November, is where prices for airfare, hotel stays, and even some activities will drop because there is not as much demand as we see in those peak periods, the holidays, and the summer.

This means it’s a great time for travelers to get much more bang for their buck if they are thinking about fitting one more trip in.

Finding Great Deals in the Market

You can find great deals to most destinations. What a lot of Americans don’t know is that airfare on average is actually very low right now—lower than it was last year and, in many cases, lower than 2019. When everything else gets more expensive, it can make it feel like travel is more expensive too, but it’s actually a great time to get more for your dollar when you’re planning a trip.

Take trips to Europe, for example. That’s the number one destination for Americans who are thinking of going internationally. A trip to Paris this summer likely would have cost you around $900 round trip. If you take that trip in September or October, it’ll cost you about $600 round trip—about $300 savings. We’re seeing those same price savings, those drops to destinations like Rome, Athens, Tokyo, and Shanghai. Really, really significant savings to a lot of these more expensive destinations.

The Impact of Discretionary Spending on Travel

To what extent is the pullback in discretionary spending for consumers also playing into what we’re seeing in the vacation economy or the experience economy right now?

It’s interesting. Coming out of the pandemic, we talked a lot about revenge travel and what felt like a really unbreakable wave of demand for travel. What we’ve seen in this last year is, even as there’s been pullback in other parts of the industry, travel expenditure has remained relatively stable. In a survey of our own Hopper users who are primarily Gen Z and Millennials, more than 80% expect to spend the same or even more on travel in the second half of this year. So, they must be cutting back elsewhere and really prioritizing that travel and experience spend over maybe some of those more consumer goods or services.

Shorter Advanced Bookings

It’s really interesting when we’ve heard from some of the travel and booking companies over the course of this earnings season. One of them, for instance, Airbnb, on their earnings call was talking about the lead times to which people are booking travel shortening, which means they’re booking it closer to the actual date that they’re planning to go on that trip. What does that signal to you about the psychology of this vacationing consumer right now?

Shorter advanced bookings are something that we’ve watched very closely at Hopper and in the industry really since 2020. Initially, it was a signal for concern that travelers had around, “Will I be able to take this trip? Will there be COVID-related closures?” etc. Now, it does seem to have transitioned from a weariness of travel to weariness of paying for travel. Most travelers are booking flights about four weeks closer to their departure date than they were pre-pandemic. Very similar for hotel stays. It does seem like some of that shift is travelers putting off the purchase, but in some cases, prices are so low on certain accommodations and many flights that travelers just have a little bit more flexibility to book later.

Holiday Travel Season Forecast

With that in mind, what do you think that sets up for the holiday travel season? We were just talking about the shoulder travel season, and that’s going to kind of take us into some of those holiday booking trends that we typically track.

The good news is our forecast for the holidays at Hopper right now has prices at or below 2023 and 2019 levels, which will mean for Americans being able to get away home for the holidays over Thanksgiving and any of the December holidays at a little bit less than what they have paid historically.

The important part there is you do need to plan ahead for the holidays. We’re expecting it to be a busy travel season. As you know, there have been many large weather events already this year. We’re expecting that it will be a bit of a chaotic travel season at the end of the year as well when we throw in snow and ice into the mix. So, we need travelers to start planning ahead, book when prices are at their lowest for the holidays—which will be in late September and early October—and plan ahead for those disruptions because we expect to see them.