Fall shakeup in travel patterns shows thriving leisure travel

Business travel is struggling to return as the fall season checks in, according to the latest travel trends. The Q3 report, which can be accessed here from Sojern, looks at the aggregate airline search and booking trends, including hotel bookings. It logs the top ten fall destinations:

1. New York City
2. Chicago
3. San Francisco
4. Los Angeles
5. Denver
6. Las Vegas
7. Washington, DC
8. Houston
9. Boston
10. Seattle

Seattle bumped Philadelphia off the list, and Washington, DC is still holding on the list as leisure destinations maintained their summer popularity - although DC is much lower this time around, again suggesting a weak business travel demand. The average booking size also shows a decrease in multi-person parties, reflecting the reduction in family travel in favor of single travelers - one sign that business travel might be on the upswing. Here's the breakdown:

However, booking windows are also an indicator of who's traveling - and it doesn't bode well for business travel. Within the 3-7 day window, only 27% of travelers were active. This parallels nicely with the tepid 28% of search/bookings being for business.

Given these challenges statistics, the airlines are certainly wary of how the government shutdown and continued fiscal cliff uncertainty will impact the all-important business travel dollar.

The detailed infographic is below, which offers more color related to the US travel market.

Full infographic here.