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By Doyinsola Oladipo and Aishwarya Jain
NEW YORK (Reuters) -This year's hottest summer travel trend? Waiting for deals.
Americans are scaling back travel plans from flights to drives or waiting to book only if the price is right, a tell-tale sign of an industry slowdown that's got travel companies worried.
Hotel summer bookings are either flat or falling from last year, and airline bookings are down even though airfares have also declined, as economic concerns fuel a pullback in spending.
Travel companies including Delta Air Lines, Marriott International, and online travel agency Booking Holdings have withdrawn or revised their 2025 annual forecasts as U.S. demand softens. Airbnb flagged shrinking booking windows as consumers take a "wait-and-see" approach and book trips closer to their check-in dates.
That has left companies with less visibility into the second half of the year. Delta said in early April it was premature to project the full year given macroeconomic uncertainty. United Airlines said there's a reasonable chance that bookings could weaken.
"It's very clear that consumers are waiting to make decisions, including for the summer," Southwest Airlines CEO Robert Jordan said at the Bernstein Annual Strategic Decisions Conference in late May, adding that demand was stable but lower than expected in January.
U.S. summer flight bookings are down 10% year-over-year, according to Flighthub, an online travel agency, even though airfares have dropped.
"You can't keep an airline seat on the shelf in a warehouse. If you don't fill that seat tomorrow and the airplane flies, it's gone," Steve Hafner, CEO of Kayak, a Booking Holdings unit, told Reuters.
Average summer flight prices declined 7%, with flights to long-haul destinations like Sydney, Australia 23% cheaper year-over-year, according to Kayak.
Hotel bookings have "actually fallen off and it gets weaker like a month out," Hyatt Hotels CEO Mark Hoplamazian told an audience at the NYU International Hospitality Investment Forum on Tuesday. "By the time you get to that month, it recovers."
Summer bookings in major U.S. cities are flat-to-down year-over-year, according to data from CoStar. Average room rates are expected to rise roughly 1.3% in 2025, down from a 1.8% increase in 2024.
"We're not getting that crazy pricing power we got in the early days of the recovery," Marriott CEO Anthony Capuano said, adding that the company was still seeing revenue per available room increase.