Sep 09, 2025
Find out which destinations are trending on Google Flights, plus updated insights on the best time to book.
- “Ready, set, jet”: This article shares 2025 holiday travel trends and tips using Google Flights data.
- Mid-sized U.S. cities are trending for Thanksgiving; warmer spots are popular for Christmas/New Year’s.
- For best prices, book domestic flights 39 days out; international, 49+ days before you go.
- Flying Monday-Wednesday and taking layovers can save you money on your holiday flights.
- Use Google Flights’ AI Flight Deals, price tracking, and Explore map to find the best deals.
If travel plans your thoughts engage,
And saving coin doth ease the wage,
Then heed these words, and mark them well,
Of Google Flights, the news to tell.
Book early for the foreign shore,
At least two months or maybe more,
For homebound flights, a shorter wait,
Thirty nine days can seal your fate.
Midweek flights offer savings sweet,
And layovers can’t be beat,
So plan ahead, with care and grace,
And find your flight at lower price.
Are you planning to travel this holiday season? If you need advice on where to go (and how to save money along the way), you’ll want to read our trends and tips for 2025, based on new data from Google Flights.
To kick things off, here are this year’s trending destinations for Thanksgiving travel within the U.S. These are the places that saw the biggest percentage increase in searches on Google Flights, compared to 2024. Mid-sized cities appear to be on the rise when it comes to domestic holiday travel.
For Christmas and New Year’s Eve, we looked at trending international destinations, and warmer locales are dominating this year’s list. It’s no surprise that with colder temperatures on the horizon for many parts of the U.S., travelers are opting for palm trees over fir trees.
Whether you’re visiting family or looking for an overseas getaway, saving money on your holiday travel is always a great feeling. And with Google Flights, there are lots of different ways to find a great deal on airfare, like the new AI-powered Flight Deals tool or long-time favorites like price tracking alerts and the Explore map.
For many travelers, a big question is whether to book flights ASAP or wait to see if prices go down. In fact, searches for “best time to book flights” reached an all-time high in the U.S. this past summer. Usually it’s best to book flights on the early side, especially if your plans aren’t very flexible. But if scoring cheaper airfare is your number one goal, there are two ways you can use historical patterns to your advantage.
First, when you have a specific itinerary in mind, Google Flights can tell you when prices are expected to be lowest for booking your chosen dates and destination. Just look for the “cheapest time to book” insights under the top search results.
The other option is to consider the more generalized guidance from our 2025 insights on the best time to book, which we’ve just updated based on four years of aggregated Google Flights data 1 . For each scenario below, we’re listing out when average prices have been lowest for trips departing from U.S. airports, relative to the departure date.
Want some more tips on how to save? It’s worth knowing that you won’t save much by booking on any particular day of the week. Tuesday has been cheapest, but only 1.3% cheaper than Sunday, the most expensive day.
The cheapest days to travel are still Monday through Wednesday (about 13% cheaper than flying over the weekend). And finally, taking a layover helps you save about 22% on average, versus flying nonstop.
METHODOLOGY: To produce the insights in this post, we calculated average round trip airfares observed January 1, 2021 through August 1, 2025 on Google Flights, for 4- to 16-day trips departing from the top 4,000 markets in the U.S. For Thanksgiving and Christmas, we examined 4- to 16-day trips with departure dates before the holiday and return dates after the holiday. For spring break, we examined 4- to 16-day trips beginning in March or April, and for summer vacation we examined 4- to 16-day trips beginning in July or August.
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