Guesty-a leading property-management platform for short-term and vacation rentals, which streamlines daily operations across booking channels, such as Airbnb, VRBO and Booking.com-is seeing an encouraging trend in travel bookings for 2020's holiday season.
Raw data on reservations being made for fall and winter vacations has shown a 38-percent increase in Thanksgiving travel bookings in comparison with the same period in 2019 and a 40-percent boost in reservations for Christmastime.
Guesty reports that, typically, customers don't begin booking their year-end trips until late summer, but the current spike in reservations being made for the fall and winter months suggests that travelers are looking to apply those saved-up vacations days from canceled summer-season trips.
"The current number of reservations in our system for summertime (June through August), across major booking channels, is 25% of the volume we had at this time last year, showing low optimism worldwide for summer travel plans," said Omer Rabin, Managing Director, Americas at Guesty.
It seems that, forced to defer their summer travel plans amid the pandemic, Americans are looking further ahead than usual and taking advantage of the incentives and relaxed cancellation policies currently being offered by management companies.
Guesty has also noted customers are booking longer domestic stays, with the average number of nights per reservation having doubled from just over four nights to nine, as people look to use their saved-up vacation days.
When asked which types of accommodations are gaining the most bookings in Guesty's system, Rabin said, "We can predict that, due to COVID-19, those who perhaps opted for traditional hotel stays in the past will be more inclined to book private rentals on Airbnb in the future, as it means not staying in the same building as several other guests."
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