Booking holiday travel is almost as stressful as going through with it. But new data and insights from Google might make it a bit easier on the brain—and wallet.
Google broke down buying habits, flight, and hotel price trends for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s by tracking the 25 most common holiday flight routes from 2017. The handy guide allows you to choose between a handful of U.S. hubs to track flights: Atlanta, Las Vegas, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington. By offering a handful of flight dates around the holiday, the data manifests in a graph outlining the price based on how many days ahead of time you purchase a ticket.
A quick stroll through the data shows that booking 100 days in advance will consistently save you money. And as expected, prices spike at least 20 days before your planned trip.
It gets better: If you’re looking to steer clear of staying with family, each section breaks down potential hotel deals you can snatch up in the moment.
Google has always offered a plethora of discovery functions for its users, which are tailored to travelers who want to get away, but aren’t quite sure where they should go. The holiday travel insights will only get you so far when it comes to planning trips across the U.S., but the app’s Explore filters will get you a bit further.
Recent updates now allow you to choose your length of trip (weekend, one week, or two weeks) and show average prices in an easy-to-read map. If you’re looking at taking an international trip over the holidays, this is a great way to do some research as the Explore page also breaks down average flight prices by month and specific dates. For examples, heading out or New York the week of New Year’s Eve? Look to Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, London, Madrid, Dublin, Milan, or Copenhagen for airfare under $600.
Want to do some exploring of your own? Check out the Google holiday travel trend data here.
