Americans intend to keep their holiday trips on the calendar this year, but they plan to pay considerably less for them. Expected holiday travel spending has dropped to an average of $419 per consumer, down 24% from $553 a year ago, according to PwC’s Holiday Outlook 2026, which surveyed 4,093 U.S. consumers in mid-June.
The share of consumers planning to travel between November 1 and December 31 held relatively steady at 40%, compared with 44% last year, and another 17% remain undecided. The savings are coming out of the trip itself: A third of travelers with plans intend to skip airfare entirely, 38% are booking budget or midrange hotels, and 35% plan to bunk with friends or family rather than pay for lodging at all.
The pullback is sharpest among younger travelers. Millennials expect to spend $510 on holiday travel, a 37% drop from last year, while Gen Z budgets fell 29% to $358 and Gen X trimmed 18% to $447. Baby boomers were the lone generation to move the other way, up 1% to $361, a shift PwC attributes to receding major expenses like mortgages and dependent costs.
Higher earners are not immune. Half of households making $150,000 or more still plan to travel, but PwC found travelers across income levels favoring midrange properties over four-star hotels or opting for a family guest room over either. The firm points to gas prices, which spiked when the survey was fielded in June, along with a personal saving rate that fell from 4.5% in January to 2.7% in June, per the Bureau of Economic Analysis, as pressure behind the caution.
Artificial intelligence is increasingly part of that cost-cutting arsenal. Some 60% of holiday travelers plan to use AI somewhere in the booking journey, up from 57% last year, most commonly to research or compare hotel and flight prices (41%), get recommendations (32%), or build an itinerary (22%).
For travel sellers, PwC frames the season as a value problem rather than a demand problem. The firm suggests suppliers may find more durability in letting prices plateau or rebalancing capacity than in continuing to push rates on the same travelers, and warns that loyalty programs face renewed scrutiny as cost-conscious consumers weigh points against a lower headline price. With 41% of travelers using AI to comparison shop before booking, PwC also cautions that rates and packages need to surface clearly in AI-generated answers, not just on the booking page.
The travel retrenchment stands in contrast to gift budgets, which are largely holding: Consumers expect to spend an average of $708 on gifts, down just 2% year over year, even as the University of Michigan’s consumer confidence index fell 18.5% between June 2025 and June 2026.
Taken together, the numbers sketch this winter’s client in unusual detail: still traveling, just on a cheaper fare or none at all, sleeping in a midrange room or a relative’s guest bed, and comparison shopping with an AI tab open before ever reaching an advisor.
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