Traveling this fall? Here’s what to expect | Tech US News

Cities are still a reference. Also tropical places like the Caribbean and Cancun.

In 2020, travelers shunned urban centers for beach towns and national parks, where it felt like a safer place to go, TripAdvisor’s Brian Hoyt said.

But last fall, Las Vegas, New York and Orlando supplanted places like Key Largo, Key West and Atlantic City as the top three destinations for travelers in fall 2020, according to TripAdvisor.

The trend continues: Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Denver, Orlando and New York are the top five most booked destinations in the United States for the fall, according to Hopper, a travel booking site. For international travelers, cities like San Juan, Puerto Rico; Cancun; Mexico City; Barcelona; and Rome are in the top 10, according to Hopper.

“What’s old is new again,” Hoyt said. “High-density population centers are back in fashion.”

But the lowest holiday is still a tie. Ocean City, NJ, a beach town about 11 miles south of Atlantic City, was the top U.S. destination this fall based on the number of nights booked, according to Airbnb. That’s part of a growing trend to extend summer. There has been increased interest from visitors who flock to the eight-mile beach in September and October, when the summer crowds leave and the town hosts events such as a vintage car show and a large block party and fireworks display, Michele said. Gillian. executive director of the Ocean City Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Travelers remain eager to head to Europe, where demand for flights and hotel bookings is “on par” in 2019, said Kareem George, travel consultant and owner of Culture Traveler, a luxury travel company.

“Italy is the highlight,” George said, “which is no surprise because Italy is always the highlight.”

London, Paris, Munich, Copenhagen and Dublin were the main cities searched by people looking to travel between September 6 and November 15, according to Expedia.

The Amalfi Coast in southern Italy and Santorini, a whitewashed Greek island in the Aegean Sea, are so popular this fall that travelers are scrambling to find accommodation, said Charles Neville, a spokesman for Jayway, a boutique travel agency specializing in European travels.

People are so eager to tour these destinations that they’re willing to spend $600 to $700 a night on accommodations that might not warrant that amount, he said.

Mr. Neville said he is encouraging customers to book later in the fall, when the weather is still pleasant and the crowds have thinned, or to consider Sicily, Croatia and lesser-known Greek islands like Paros and Naxos. “Maybe that’s a way to make your Greek island vacation dreams come true without spending stupid amounts of money,” he said.

In the Americas, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Costa Rica are seeing more passengers book travel than in 2019, said Scott Keyes, founder of Scott’s Cheap Flights. The countries are easy to access and plane tickets are generally cheap: A round-trip fare from almost anywhere in the United States to Colombia was selling for about $260 in August, he said.

“For a lot of people, the trip they want to take as their first trip back is fun, overseas, but not too far,” Keyes said.

That kind of ease is what Silvia Sims, a retired sales manager who lives in suburban Detroit, said she and her three friends wanted when they started planning their fall trip last May. They settled in Jamaica, where Mrs Sims, 71, had traveled nearly a dozen times since the early 1980s, but had not visited since April 2019.

“I’m coming back to a place where I love to visit and feel safe,” she said. – Maria Cramer