Traveling for
the Holidays?

Christmas is now just 94 days away. And unlike last fall, some hotels are already fully booked for the entire holiday season.

According to CNBC, people are reserving their vacations earlier than normal this year, despite an unsettling rise in COVID-19 infections caused by the highly contagious delta variant. The reason, travel experts say, has everything to do with vaccine confidence.

If you haven't booked yet, now's the time. This month, domestic airfares are down 5% from September 2019 and international fares down about 8%, drops due to the traditional price slump that happens at the end of the peak summer travel season plus the drop in business travel due to the Delta variant, according to the Los Angeles Times.

And as many Americans continue to work from home, the holiday travel schedule is going to look a little different this year. Travel + Leisure has the most popular travel dates and warns that car rentals could run tricky to get ahold of. The demand for car rentals in the U.S. this holiday season is already up 229% compared to 2019 and up 244% compared to 2020—an indicator that we could experience another car rental shortage over the holidays.