As a traveler who prefers the off-season for its more affordable prices and fewer visitors, I try not to fly in July and August, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. I wait until fall when rates for flights and hotels normally plunge and crowds shrink.
Or they used to.
This year, hotels in Florence, Italy, in September were charging close to summer highs. I was priced out of Key West, Fla., in November, a historically slow month. Considering the eco-friendly resort Playa Viva near Zihuatanejo, Mexico, for the first week of December — long a bargain time to travel — I could find only one night available at rates below $500.
What, I wondered, happened to the off-season?
“September is the new August,” said Jack Ezon, the founder of Embark Beyond, a high-end travel agency based in New York City, explaining that the frenzy for European travel stretched the calendar. Nearly a third of his clients who regularly travel to the Mediterranean in July and August rescheduled for June, September or October.
“People are making choices to avoid the crowds and the heat,” said Virgi Schiffino Kennedy, the founder of Lux Voyage, a travel agency based in Philadelphia.
“I’m seeing summer rates creeping into shoulder season,” she added, noting that destinations like Santorini and Mykonos in Greece, which peak in July and August, “are now impossible to book in September.”
School calendars still largely dictate the biggest peaks in travel annually, but the dips are not as dramatic — in numbers and in rates.
“I think we’re at the beginning of a change,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst who runs the firm Atmosphere Research Group based in San Francisco, crediting flexible work schedules for the trend. “Summer will always be peak season, but I think we’ll see more off-peak travel in fall, winter and spring so those valleys may be less deep.”
Travel is most certainly back — the World Travel & Tourism Council said the industry will recover 95 percent of 2019 activity this year — but it’s not a replica of prepandemic patterns.
Compared to 2019, global leisure stays were up 12 percent in spring 2023 at more than 230 Sofitel and MGallery hotels. Fall 2022 bookings were up 7 percent for leisure guests compared to the same period prepandemic.
“Booking shoulder season was once travel’s best-kept secret, but more people are catching on to the trend,” said Matt Berna, the president for the Americas of Intrepid Travel, a global tour company. He said fall and spring bookings this year have grown by 56 and 70 percent, respectively, compared to prepandemic business, inspiring the company to increase its departures to meet the demand.
The river cruise line AmaWaterways has done the same, adding new itineraries for November and
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Milwaukee, Wisconsin is a city on the rise; so much so that it just joined our Readers’ Choice Awards list of the best big cities in the US, ranking third—just behind San Diego and Chicago. Long considered nearby Chicago's little sibling, Milwaukee has finally come into its own by growing amongst younger people for its affordability over the Second City, allowing people to buy homes and rent better apartments. Not to mention the growing restaurant scene, new infrastructure increasing walkability, and enough city amenities for the Midwest gem to truly feel desirable—it’s no longer just a small town. And with so many local colleges and a venerated art museum, there is strong curiosity and willingness to embrace the new.
It was two nights before Qatar’s World Cup, and all across its stadiums, staffers were frantically removing beer stands – the country had reversed its decision to serve alcohol in stadiums.
Renowned for its jaw-dropping architecture, world-class museums and mouth-watering street food (did some say deep-dish pizza?) it's no wonder Chicago was voted the second-best city in the world by media and hospitality giant TimeOut.
When it was first announced last year, the Four Seasons Yacht generated a lot of excitement among cruisers and loyal fans of the hotel brand alike. But few details on what would be aboard the 14-deck luxury yacht, which is slated to launch at the end of 2025, have been available—until now.
Cities and countries across Europe have introduced visitor taxes as they battle the return of mass tourism following the pandemic. The extra fees can mean increasing the cost of your holiday by hundreds of dollars.
Belize Tourism Board is proud to announce it is the official host destination for the inaugural 2024 World Travel Sustainability Awards (WTSA), the new World Travel Awards programme to help drive Net Positive Hospitality in Travel and Tourism. Belize will provide the perfect backdrop to the awards as a destination that holds responsible tourism at the core of its value systems, developing projects that encourage travellers to engage with the country’s rainforests, reefs, and unique culture in a truly sustainable and responsible manner. The World Travel Sustainability Awards will be launched in Dubai at COP28 and feature more than 40 new categories. Belize and the WTA are developing a powerful network of trusted, authoritative partners, that will guide the awards programme on best practices, standards, criteria, and the actual award category list.
While the Caribbean is home to its fair share of wildlife-filled islands—Saint Lucia, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico, to name a few—one of the region’s most underrated ecotourism destinations measures in at just a mere thirteen square kilometers in area. Known as Saba, this dazzling Dutch overseas region holds a king-sized level of biodiversity in spite of its small size, packed full of fascinating fish, reptiles, and birds for visitors to marvel at—and when it comes to avian life in particular, the Saba Bird Fest is one of the island’s most unmissable events.
Low-cost Icelandic airline Play is making a fall or winter European getaway more affordable with 30 percent off flights to popular destinations across the continent.
As the summer travel season comes to a close, one airline is giving travelers a reason to start planning next summer's vacation. Delta Air Lines announced it will be operating its largest trans-Atlantic flight schedule ever, debuting just in time for summer 2024. The airline will be adding new destinations including Naples and bringing back service to Shannon, Ireland. According to Delta, next summer it will operate 260 weekly flights to 18 countries in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK). This includes a new flight from JFK to Munich three times a week that will start on April 9, 2024, and a daily nonstop flight to Shannon, Ireland that will begin on May 23, 2024. The carrier will expand its existing service to Italy — it already flies to Milan, Venice, and Rome — with a new daily service to Naples. It will also resume service between Atlanta and Zurich, Switzerland, four times a week, which had originally been cut in 2019.