Still waiting till November to make your holiday travel plans? Now’s the time to rethink your strategy. According to our Chief Economist, Jake Bouvrie, “The outdated advice to book 60 days in advance is not always the most reliable – the best time to book your flight is route specific. It depends on where you’re going and where you’re flying from and our data can help with that.” Here are 4 things to keep in mind if you actually want to save money on holiday travel this year.
Expect to spend a little more than usual.
Maybe consider your presence to be the present this holiday season – prices for flights, hotels and rental cars are up across the board*. But there’s still hope for finding a deal when you use our favourite money-saving tools.
Start by trying our Best Time to Travel tool – we recently revamped it, just in time for the holidays. It’ll calculate which days you should travel and when you should book, based on your rigin and holiday destination. You can also set Price Alerts for your preferred flight, hotel and car rental options. That way, we’ll let you know if/when the price changes so you can lock in a better price.
We’ll say it louder for the people in the back: arrive early.
Expect traffic at more places than the highway. Hubs like YYZ, YVR, YUL and YYC are scoped to be some of the busiest airports for Thanksgiving and Christmas**. If it were us, we’d add an extra hour or two to our usual airport time. Or, you can try to avoid this traffic altogether by departing from a different hub. Check the box for “add nearby airports” when you search to see all your other options.
Be choosy about which days you travel.
The date you depart for your trip matters. If you can, try to head out for Thanksgiving early – the cheapest day to fly domestically is on October 6th (3 days before the holiday). When heading out for Christmas, try to travel closer to the 24th – the cheapest day to fly domestically is Christmas Eve*.
Turn up the heat for the New Year.
Once you’ve had your fill of the cold for Christmas, haul your holly jolly self somewhere warm for NYE. According to our numbers, some of the top trending New Year’s destinations include Punta Cana, Bangkok, Miami and Fort Lauderdale****. All these hot spots have average temps around 27 degrees during December, so you can thaw out before returning to reality.
Haven’t talked with your fam about where you’re spending the holidays quite yet? Here’s your sign to start the conversation. In the meantime, go ahead and use our Best Time To Travel: Holiday Edition to start your search.
Methodology
*KAYAK considered flight searches between 2/10/2023 and 8/9/2023 for travel between 10/6/2023 and 1/3/2024. For year over year comparative data, search dates between 2/11/2022 and 8/10/2022 for travel dates between 11/18/2022 and 1/4/2023 were used.
**KAYAK considered Canadian airports with the highest search counts for both departing and arriving flights for search dates 2/10/2023 – 8/9/2023. For Thanksgiving travel, travel dates between 10/6/23 – 10/15/23 were used. For Christmas travel, travel dates between 12/21/2023 – 1/3/2023 were used.
***KAYAK considered flight destinations with the greatest year over year increase in searches for search dates 3/1/2023 – 8/31/2023 and travel dates 12/26/2023 – 1/3/2024. For year over year comparison, search dates between 3/1/2022 – 8/31/2022 for travel dates 12/26/2022 – 1/3/2023 were used.
