Holiday Bookings - Busy or Bust?

[Danae Pitcher]

How is everyone seeing the holiday bookings this year as compared to last year?  Are people holding on to their money or are they feeling good about the future?  We keep seeing conflicting views but my personal experience with buyers indicates that the outlook is positive.  

[John Underwood]

We have over 20k in bookings on our Pigeon Forge Cabin for December so far.

[Garrett Brown]

Our STRs are all booked for the holidays majority wise but the one week that is slow across the board is the week post-Thanksgiving. In general, the booking lead time has been the lowest in years though (used to average around 40-45 days now its about 25-30 days) but our occpuancy rates are still as high as ever. 

[Trent Reeve]

its very slow in Panama City beach. very slow

[Andrew Steffens]

We are just about sold out for Thanksgiving, 75% sold out for Christmas and NYE in Tampa area.  It was slow pre-election but now the bookings have poured in.  Definitely more last minute this year than last.  I think pricing is especially important.

[Michael Baum]

Hey @Danae Pitcher, so we have had a 7 day stay for early Thanksgiving, but nothing for actual Thanksgiving week. Christmas is still open as well.

We don't get a ton of bookings in the winter other than the holidays and even then not every year.

There isn't much to do at the lake house in the winter. Snow is coming down, the lake is freezing over etc.

[Danae Pitcher]

@Andrew Steffens sounds like it’s going great so far but I do agree that pricing is key this year.  

[Danae Pitcher]

@Michael Baum Hi Michael. I hope you have a great holiday! You might need a Florida STR so you can hit all of the seasons. 😀

[Michael Baum]

Haha @Danae Pitcher! Yeah we have talked about it but so far we haven't really tried to make that work.

I would much rather do a ski cabin here in Idaho or Montana. :)

[Dan H.]

My STRs in San Diego are slow.  All 4 are booked for thanksgiving but 3 of them booked late enough that they received the late booking rate.   

december has one unit fully booked, 2 units half booked, and one unit that is virtually the same as one of the half booked units that has literally 0 nights booked (why?, it is virtually the same unit).  overall 50% book rate for Dec that still may go up slightly (especially the zero booked unit is likely to book for Christmas).

There is a reason it is called the off season.

[JD Martin]

Quote from @Danae Pitcher:

How is everyone seeing the holiday bookings this year as compared to last year?  Are people holding on to their money or are they feeling good about the future?  We keep seeing conflicting views but my personal experience with buyers indicates that the outlook is positive.  

 I'm in your market (4 Corners) and we've got Thanksgiving & the Christmas/New Years weeks booked but a big gap in between them, whereas we're usually filled up from the beginning of November on. So still very slow. I have had a few 2025s come in so far, which is a little better and earlier than last year, so we'll see how it goes from here. 

[Jorge Vazquez]

Hey Danae, I’m fully booked with my properties for the holidays, so things are looking strong on my end! From what I’m seeing, people are still traveling and making plans, especially for vacation rentals in desirable areas. It seems like there’s optimism out there, at least in my market. Hope your season is busy, too!

[V.G Jason]

Slightly less bookings, way less lead times, prices have dropped.

January 2025 is promising relative to how 2024 has played out. Have some bookings out as far as Valentine's day, but we usually don't show past 14-15 weeks to re adjust for pricing. So not sure if we'd get booked further.