When it comes to vacation planning around your job, most people plan vacations around their regular time off – holidays and weekends. That can help “bank” any time off you have, but 9 times out of ten, this strategy doesn’t save your hard-earned money. Don’t read this while your boss is looking over your shoulder – but the best deals are during the week. Here’s why you should book your vacation flights mid-week instead of the weekend.
Why you should book your vacations around mid-week flights instead of the weekend
Tuesdays and Wednesdays offer deeper flight and hotel discounts
Most of the time, the best-priced flights are mid-week. This is due to a number of factors. The airlines do tend to release sale fares on Tuesdays, and mid-week flights tend to be less busy overall.
In addition, hotels also offer better prices when you book mid-week. You can sometimes book shockingly low rates just by avoiding the higher-priced weekend!
The data backs up Tuesdays and Wednesdays for best prices
When we do our annual summer flights and holiday flights analysis, you can see that the lowest flight prices are almost always on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Another reason for this phenomenon is definitely U.S. employees’ desire to use the weekends to their advantage. When you look at the most expensive days to fly, it’s often Thursday or Friday and Sunday. Especially when holidays land on the weekend, you can see by the data that the most expensive flights are usually on those days around the weekend.
Mitigate expensive “peak” travel costs
Some of the considerations for vacation time is that the reason some of these airline ticket prices are high, is that demand is high. These “peak” travel times like Thanksgiving and summer, are already more expensive than other times of the year.
Now, of course we could tell you not to travel during “peak” times, but that’s just not practical. Kids are off school in the summer, and families gather over Thanksgiving and Christmas. But – if you can buy on days that other people are not flying, you can save big – even during peak travel.
Change your mindset around time off and PTO
While we too understand the impulse to save those PTO days – we also think the monetary incentive for taking PTO during the week is strong. If you have a family of 4 and can save $75 if you fly home on a Tuesday rather than Sunday, why wouldn’t you? That’s $300 for your trip – not peanuts.
Book your next vacation and use that PTO!
