The Labor Day holiday travel period is one of the busiest each summer, and experts predict the 2021 edition will be busy on the roads and in the skies.
According to ABCNews.com, trip-planning app TripIt revealed that bookings for domestic flights are 53 percent of what they were in 2019, which is a drastic increase from the same period last year during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Travel analysis website Hopper revealed the most-booked domestic destinations for Labor Day weekend include Las Vegas, Atlanta and Denver, while Mexico and the Caribbean are the top spots for international tourists.
“Mid-July was incredibly strong for bookings, and we’re expecting Labor Day to be very similar in that regard,” Hopper economist Adit Damodaran told ABC News. “We’re already seeing really high searches for Labor Day weekend. And in comparison to mid-July, it’s very similar.”
Scott’s Cheap Flights founder Scott Keyes said that while the Delta variant is hurting overall bookings, the number of people traveling to Mexico from the United States is 10 percent higher than pre-pandemic levels.
“That seems to suggest that travelers have started feeling more comfortable going to places like Mexico and the Caribbean,” Damodaran continued. “It’s just a shift away from that transatlantic travel that we saw over the summer, but I still think we’re seeing travelers feeling comfortable traveling internationally as long as it’s close to home.”
As for the busiest airports in the U.S. during the Labor Day holiday travel period, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Chicago-O’Hare International Airport and Los Angeles International Airport are expected to top the list.
Earlier this month, a new study published by The Vacationer revealed this Labor Day weekend would have the highest rates of travel this year so far, exceeding the number of travelers who took advantage of the Fourth of July weekend.