Last fall Las Vegas (above), Latest York City and Orlando, Fla., were the highest three destinations for travelers,in keeping with TripAdvisor.
David Becker/Getty Images
Cities remain a go-to. So do tropical places just like the Caribbean and Cancun.
In 2020, travelers avoided urban centers for beach towns and national parks, where it felt like a safer place to go, said Brian Hoyt of TripAdvisor.
But by last fall, Las Vegas, Latest York City, and Orlando had supplanted places like Key Largo, Key West and Atlantic City, which were the highest three destinations for travelers in fall 2020, in keeping with TripAdvisor.
The trend is continuous: Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Denver, Orlando and Latest York are the five most booked destinations in america for fall, in keeping with Hopper, a travel booking site. For international travelers, cities like San Juan, Puerto Rico; Cancun; Mexico City; Barcelona; and Rome are in the highest 10, in keeping with Hopper.
“What’s old is latest again,” Mr. Hoyt said. “High-density population centers are back in vogue.”
But lower-key vacations are still a draw. Ocean City, N.J., a beach town of about 11 miles south of Atlantic City, was the highest trending U.S. destination this fall based on the variety of nights booked, in keeping with Airbnb. That’s a part of a growing trend to increase summer. There was a surge of interest from visitors who flock to the eight miles of beach in September and October, when the summer crowds leave and the town hosts events like an antique automobile show and an enormous block party and fireworks show, said Michele Gillian, executive director of the Ocean City Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Travelers remain desperate to go to Europe, where demand for flights and hotel bookings is “on par” with 2019, said Kareem George, a travel adviser and the owner of Culture Traveler, a firm specializing in luxury trips.
“Italy is the standout,” Mr. George said, “which is just not a surprise because Italy at all times is the standout.”
London, Paris, Munich, Copenhagen and Dublin were the highest cities searched by people trying to travel between Sept. 6 and Nov. 15, in keeping with Expedia.
The Amalfi coast in southern Italy and Santorini, a whitewashed Greek island within the Aegean Sea, are so popular this fall that travelers are struggling to seek out accommodations, said Charles Neville, a spokesman for Jayway, a boutique travel agency that makes a speciality of European travel.
Individuals are so desperate to tour these destinations they’re willing to spend $600 to $700 an evening for accommodations that won’t justify that quantity, he said.
Mr. Neville said he’s encouraging clients to book later in the autumn when the weather remains to be nice and the crowds have abated, or to think about Sicily, Croatia and lesser known islands in Greece like Paros and Naxos. “Possibly that’s a strategy to have your Greek island vacation dreams come true without spending silly amounts of cash,” he said.
Within the Americas, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Costa Rica are seeing more passengers book trips than they did in 2019, said Scott Keyes, founding father of Scott’s Low-cost Flights. The countries are easy to get to and airline tickets are generally low cost — round-trip fare from nearly anywhere in america to Colombia was selling for about $260 in August, he said.
“For plenty of folks, the trip they need to take as their first one back is fun, overseas, but not too distant,” Mr. Keyes said.
That type of ease is what Silvia Sims, a retired sales manager who lives in suburban Detroit, said she and her three friends wanted after they began planning their fall trip last May. They settled on Jamaica, where Ms. Sims, 71, has traveled nearly a dozen times because the early Nineteen Eighties but had not visited since April 2019.
“I’m going back to a spot where I actually love to go to and I feel secure,” she said. — Maria Cramer
