Sizing Up This Year’s Batch of Black Friday Travel Deals
The retail industry’s biggest day of the year is fast approaching, with Black Friday travel prices set to become more steep and aggressive next week following last year’s $3.7 billion in sales.
This year, with more than $1.7 trillion in sales, Black Friday is poised to be the busiest season in retail history. The U.S. Travel Association estimates that more than 100 million people will set out on the night of Nov. 24 to spend money on electronics, clothing, food and household items.
Of those, Black Friday is expected to see the biggest influx of shoppers, driving up the competition for holiday deals in the travel industry, a key industry to the U.S. economy.
While Black Friday’s overall impact on the travel industry is hard to forecast with any precision, the retail side of the business has its own forecasting challenges.
“There’s been a bit of a misconception of what the impact of Black Friday sales will be on the travel industry,” said Scott Schreiber, president and chief executive of TripAdvisor, the world’s largest travel information site. “Every year there is a sense that Black Friday is a big deal. But it should not be interpreted as a big deal.”
When it comes to Black Friday travel, travelers are looking for deals and not for a long-term trend like “peak travel” or “peak season.” They look for items they can buy now for their trip but don’t need or want to buy until after their trip is more than a year or two down the road. And they are looking for bargains, not for deals of the year.
And that is reflected in the deals on offer. Last year, for example, a few retailers showed significant deals in early November, such as a free