2020 Holiday Travel Trends Report
Holiday Travel Trends Summary
VacationHomeRents.com studied the search and click habits of over 1,500 users over the course of three and a half weeks, from October 5 through 29. The goal of this study was the see how North Americans are thinking about travel during the 2020 holiday season and consider what this might mean for the industry into next year.
The rest of this report is broken down into the following four trends the team sees developing:
- Budget-Friendly Travel
- All-in-One Accommodations
- Smaller Cities & Great Outdoor Destinations
- Increasingly Short Booking Windows
What these trends ultimately suggest is that concerns over the coronavirus pandemic have risen again, affecting the decisions user are making when considering accommodation bookings.
About VacationHomeRents.com
VacationHomeRents.com empowers users with the data and tools to easily find and compare the best vacation rental apartments, cabins, houseboats, beach houses, and RV deals, all in one place. With one simple click, VacationHomeRents.com searches millions of listings across Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, and more. Using the tools and guides developed by the VacationHomeRents team, travelers can feel confident they are making informed travel decisions and booking at the best available price.
Budget-Friendly Travel
With the rising economic uncertainty, those who are able and ready to travel are looking for ways to cut back on expenses, including the price they are willing to pay for accommodations.
While the majority of searches and clicks were for listings with a maximum capacity of 6 people or less (57.77%), the data showed that nearly two-thirds of users clicked on 1-bedroom or 2-bedroom listings (63.15%).
This suggests that people are a close group willing to sleep on couches in addition to beds in order to secure a better deal.
Price Point
In looking at user click activity, it appears that nearly 60% of clicks are for listings priced under $150 per night, with just under 48% of clicks on listings in the $0 to $100 range. This led the team to conclude that a large majority of users now lean more towards economical, or “budget-friendly” vacation rental choices.
Listing Type
The story of travelers preferring vacation homes to hotels appears to play out in VacationHomeRents.com user activity. Looking at the “Type of Place” search filters selected by users, House continues to be the most popular listing option (46%), followed by Condo (30%), Cabin (22%) and Cottage (2%).
A similar pattern appears when looking at which listings users clicked on for more information. The top 5 listing property types users clicked through to are House (26.58%), Condo (14.66%), Apartment (9.75%), Cabin (8.81%) and Villa (4.18%).
Bedroom Distribution
When looking at the bedroom distribution of the listings’ click data, the data shows that 35.27% of travelers are clicking on 1-bedroom listings, thus suggesting these are solo travelers or couples.
The next largest datapoint, 2-bedroom listings, represented 27.88% of clicks. These users could be either a smaller group of friends or a single household traveling together.
The remaining 36.85% are clicking on listings of three bedrooms or more. These are larger groups that can potentially indicate families across multiple households interested in getting together over the holidays.
Bathroom Distribution
When looking at the click data of listings' bathroom data, it appears to be roughly consistent with the bedroom data distribution.
According to the data, 44.75% of travelers are clicking on listings with one bathroom, which indicates nearly half of the traveling demographic are singles, couples or potentially smaller groups/family households that don’t mind sharing one bathroom. The other half are likely to be larger families or groups.
This may also reflect the desire to find listings that offer a lower price, indicating that the user is considering listings with one bathroom rather than a more expensive rental with two to save on the nightly rate, for example.
Max Capacity Distribution
According to the click data of maximum capacity of listings, the largest datapoint shows that 43.03% of clicked listings can accommodate four to six people, further suggesting that users tend to be small groups of friends or family households.
Given that we can see max capacity of two people ranking third on this chart (14.74%), we might be able to conclude that some people searching for one-bedroom listings are actually groups of four who don’t mind sleeping on a couch or pull-out-bed.
This further lends itself to the overall suggestion that travlers are looking for economical, budget-friendly vacation rentals to book over the holidays.
All-in-One Accommodations
In looking at the most popular amenities on vacation rental listings, the data suggests users are perhaps beginning to look for accommodations that can offer an all-in-one experience. Rather than using the rental as a homebase for exploring the surrounding area, they are looking for amenities, like Pool and Full Kitchen, to entertain themselves on-site.
Amenity Search Data
Based on the below chart, the top five amenities across all searches are Pool (11.71%), Air Conditioning (10.36%),Full Kitchen (9.91%), Hot Tub (7.66%) and Fireplace (7.21%).
Looking at the amenities available in listings that users actually clicked on, the results are a bit different from the amenities based on the search data. More specifically, here Pool and Hot Tub rank lower than in the search data.
VacationHomeRents believes the reason is that amenities like Internet, TV, Bed Linens Provided, Parking and No Smoking are the most common amenities featured across nearly all listings. This may explain why Internet and TV ranked at the top of the list.
Smaller Cities & Great Outdoor Destinations
Places that offer the ability to practice social distancing prove to be popular when choosing where to travel, with small cities and towns in the great outdoors topping the most searched destinations.
Heatmap of Popular Locations
Through an analysis of the most recent vacation rental searches, clicks and bookings, VacationHomeRents created this heat map below of the most popular destinations in the United States. The darker the red color over an area means it is more popular among travelers.
The five most popular destinations are:
The top five states travelers are interested in visiting over the holidays are FL, CA, KY, GA and CO, shown below:
Increasingly Short Booking Windows
Similar to past periods of uncertainty, users are waiting until the last minute to book their travel. The current coronavirus pandemic is no exception, with users seeming to take a wait-and-see approach before booking accommodations. For the moment, search activity seems to be highest for travel dates around the holidays (42.69%).
Search Data by Travel Month
Looking at the search data by travel month, over three-quarters of users (77.45%) were searching travel dates through the end of the current calendar year.
Perhaps surprisingly, the largest datapoint for this study, which was conducted throughout the month of October, was for travel dates within the month of October (34.76%), suggested that the booking window for over a third of these users could be as short as a few days up to a couple of weeks.
Less surprising is that over 42% of the searches fell around November and December 2020, normally the peak for holiday season travel.
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