Travel Tuesday is becoming more popular. What is it?

Along with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Travel Tuesday is another excuse for shoppers to spend money in the days after Thanksgiving.

“The latest entrant in this category of Thanksgiving-adjacent, calendar-linked marketing pushes is Travel Tuesday —a day on which shoppers can find deals on travel purchases such as hotel stays or airline flights,” according to a report by McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm.

Travel Tuesday is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving; this year it is taking place on Dec. 3. It takes place the day after Cyber Monday, per CNBC.

It is a day where people can find deals on travel expenses such as airline flights or hotel stays, and the popularity of Travel Tuesday has increased significantly in the past few years, per McKinsey & Company.

Travel Tuesday’s increase in popularity

According to CNBC, searches on Google for Travel Tuesday began to rise in late 2017, and then dropped off during the pandemic. There was a sharp rise in searches for the day through 2022 and 2023, in North America, Western Europe and Australia.

“Search interest for ‘Travel Tuesday’ rose more than 500% from 2021 to 2023,” according to CNBC taking from the McKinsey & Company report.

According to Google Trends, the areas in the U.S. with the most searches for Travel Tuesday are Washington, D.C., Massachusetts, Hawaii, Minnesota and Delaware.

In 2023 there were also spikes in searches for the top 15 most popular destination around the time of Travel Tuesday.

According to the report, here was also a surge in search traffic for resort-heavy destinations such as Dominican Republic, Bahamas and Punta Cana, per Travel Pulse.

Cyber Monday still has ten times as much interest as Travel Tuesday, but while interest in Cyber Monday is declining, interest in Travel Tuesday is increasing, according to McKinsey & Company.

In 2023, there was a significant increase in bookings for flights, hotels and cruises among American travelers around Travel Tuesday.

Travel Tuesday outside the U.S.

According to CNBC, searches for Travel Tuesday are most popular among Americans and Canadians but there is also increasing interest outside North America.

There has been rising interest Travel Tuesday in the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Australia and Spain.

Travel Tuesday has not caught on in Asia yet except for in Singapore, according to McKinsey & Company.

According to CNBC, as Travel Tuesday increases in popularity, companies and destinations outside of the U.S. have began to offer more Travel Tuesday deals.