In Brief: Despite record-high hotel rates during the summer travel season, overall bookings remained resilient, indicating that many travelers continued to prioritize travel even as costs increased.
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The Summer Travel Season Is Over. Here’s What Record-High Prices Actually Did To Bookings – Image Credit Unsplash+
As peak summer travel season winds down, new data confirms that record-high trip costs never slowed down bookings. Squaremouth surveyed more than 7,600 customers last month and found that travel costs rose to the level that travelers flagged as their limit, but bookings kept climbing.
Where Travelers Said They’d Draw the Line on Price
When asked in the survey how much prices would need to rise before they’d reconsider, travelers identified a clear price threshold:
- Nearly four in ten (39.1%) said a cost increase of 10% to 25% would force them to reconsider.
- Another 7.5% said an increase of less than 10% would do it.
At an average of $9,032, summer trip costs grew 17.4% over last year, reaching the level travelers said would give them pause. Yet, at the time of this release, insured summer trips are up 18.3% year-over-year.
What Travelers Did Instead of Canceling
- 10.2% traveled closer to home.
- 9.7% purchased more travel insurance coverage than usual.
- 7.7% chose a less expensive destination.
- 6.2% postponed a trip.
- 4.2% shortened a trip, and 3.6% downgraded accommodations.
- Only 3.0% canceled a trip entirely, while 55.4% made no change to their plans at all.
“Travel isn’t the first thing people cut from their budgets anymore,” says Chrissy Valdez, Senior Director of Operations at Squaremouth. “While we know that travelers are sensitive to price increases, the record trip costs we’ve seen still aren’t enough to force them to cancel. Rather, they’re finding ways to alter and better protect their trips.”