Here’s How Travel Tuesday Is Turning Into Black Friday for Deal-Hunting Vacationers

Retailers long ago figured out how to give an extra boost to end-of-year purchasing surges, using increasingly popular sales days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Now companies in the tourism sector are getting in on that action as well, touting Travel Tuesday deals that are generating growing consumer interest.

Organized the week after Thanksgiving, Travel Tuesday is the promotional occasion for airlines, cruise lines, hotels, resorts, and other vacation service providers to offer trip-taking bargains, much as retailers mark down flat screen TVs and appliances during Black Friday sales. Though the concept dates back to at least 2018, a recent study by global consulting giant McKinsey said interest in Travel Tuesday surged in the post-pandemic era. According to the company’s report, Google search data indicates queries on the Travel Tuesday increased by 500 percent between November 2021 and the same month in 2023, while those for Cyber Monday declined by nearly 40 percent since 2020.

To be sure, overall numbers of searches for Cyber Monday remain more than 10 times larger than for Travel Tuesday. But McKinsey says rising interest in the latter event—which lands on Dec. 3 this year—indicates it has established a solid, growing place amid “Thanksgiving-adjacent, calendar-linked marketing pushes.”

That leap in searches has also been matched by increased bookings at travel sector businesses offering big discounts.

During last year’s event, Travel Tuesday reservations on airlines and cruise ships rose 60 percent and 55 percent respectively, compared to the two weeks prior to and after the event. Travel Tuesday bookings at hotels rose by about 28 percent during that same surrounding four-week period, bettered only by a 29 percent Cyber Monday boost the day before.

Bargains offered included JetBlue’s $49 one-way fares to destinations in the U.S., Mexico, and Caribbean, Hawaiian Airlines’ $94 tickets each way between mainland and island cities, and Hilton’s 50 percent discounts on room prices at selected hotels. Those and other 2023 Travel Tuesday deals were among a very long list compiled by the trade publication AFAR.

Why are rising numbers of consumers embracing the industry-created promotional event and benefitting from travel bargains on offer?

For starters, the pandemic-era yearning of many people to get out and see more of the country and world hasn’t weakened since. That trend continues, and business at airlines and hotels continues surging. Meanwhile, the recent two-year period of high inflation that led most consumers to insist on getting the best value possible before making any purchase has spread to prospective vacationers.

Then there’s the timing of the offer, which drops after most plans and purchases tied to year-end vacation or family visit have already been made. Instead, Travel Tuesday shoppers tend to be looking to save on trips they’ll make a few months down the line as a warm weather escape awaiting longer summer trips.

“(There’s) evidence that travelers are more likely to book travel in warm-weather destinations when the weather in their own regions is gloomy,” the McKinsey report said. “Travel companies can treat the Travel Tuesday marketing moment as an opportunity to help bolster revenue during the period between late November and early December, which otherwise tends to see low booking volume.”

So will Travel Tuesday eventually become as big a sales multiplier for the industry as Black Friday and Cyber Monday have been for retailers? Not likely, say McKinsey experts.

Air transport, lodgings, and other travel arrangements require larger sums of money than most big-ticket retail items—or even the total a single shopper might spend to make multiple purchases of lower cost goods. For that reason, Travel Tuesday shoppers usually already have firm ideas about what they’re looking for—and at what kind of price they’ll pay—before they go bargain hunting.

“(U)nlike some of the impulse purchases consumers make on Black Friday, travel bookings can require more planning,” Ryan Mann, a partner in McKinsey’s Travel, Logistics and Infrastructure told CNBC.