Discover why Americans are more likely to take to the road this Thanksgiving – and other key travel trends across the holiday period
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Ninety-one per cent of Americans celebrate Thanksgiving – and this year, projections suggest that nearly 80 million people will travel for the holiday, up by 1.7 million compared to 2023.
In general, the majority of those who plan to celebrate Thanksgiving away from their homes – 69 per cent – expect their travels to take less than an hour. But what about those that board lengthy train journeys, or even go on an ocean cruise ?
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Here we delve into the main trends of transport over the holiday – car, air, rail and bus – as well as the increased prevalence of cruising during Thanksgiving – to unpick exactly how Americans are travelling over the Thanksgiving season.
Transport by car
Travelling via car is still the US’s number one preferred method of transport during Thanksgiving, with a projected 71.7 million expected to take to the road during the holiday, surpassing pandemic numbers of 70.6 million people back in 2019.
According to car rental company Hertz, the cities with the highest demand to rent a car for Thanksgiving this year have been Atlanta, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Oahu, Orlando and Phoenix.
Taking trips in the car over Thanksgiving this year may be influenced by the US’s current low gas prices, linked to the slowdown in the country’s inflation as well as its solidifying economy. From the summer high of 70 cents a gallon, the price of gas has now plummeted to levels not seen since 2021 – making this year the cheapest Thanksgiving in terms of fuel prices since 2020.
Despite the appeal of travelling via car for low gas prices, one of the drawbacks of getting into a car this Thanksgiving period is spending your hours stuck in huge streams of traffic. The worst-hit cities, according to the AA, are New York with an 133 per cent increase in traffic congestion, followed by Washington (120 per cent), Seattle (119 per cent), Boston (117 per cent) and Los Angeles (111 per cent).
Plane travel
Travelling via air is projected to hit an all-time record high this year, estimated at 5.84 million people making domestic flights during the season. And the US’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is already preparing to gear itself up to screen an estimated 18.3 million people from Tuesday 26 November to Monday 2 December, an increase of six per cent compared to 2023.
The busiest airports are projected to be Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and Denver International Airport, while the busiest day for travelling during the Thanksgiving period is set to be Sunday 1 December.
A current employee strike at the country’s ninth-busiest airport, North Carolina’s Charlotte Douglas International Airport, may slow down the speed of moving its projected one million passengers from check-in desk to plane over Thanksgiving. Construction at the sixth-largest airport – John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York – has also been pointed out as a factor to cause delays to travellers.
Bus, rail – and cruise?
While automobile and aviation may take the top spots for how Americans travel during Thanksgiving, there is still a significant proportion of people who use other means of transport to get around.
Collectively, nearly 2.3 million people are expected to travel via alternate methods including bus, rail and cruise for Thanksgiving this year. And last year alone, the US’s national railway provider Amtrak saw more than one million customers on its trains during the Thanksgiving period, even adding extra carriages to some of its busiest rail routes in the Northeast Corridor (an area encompassing states including New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania).
A more unfamiliar – but ever-expanding transport industry – during the Thanksgiving period is cruising. After recovering from the economic downturn of the pandemic and restrictions dampening companies’ abilities to set sail, sailings during Thanksgiving week now often near or fill capacity. This market is so vast that analysis shows a 20 percent uptick in domestic and international cruise bookings for Thanksgiving compared to last year.
On these ships, passengers can unwind and take the burden of cooking Thanksgiving – one ship, the Holland America Line’s Nieuw Statendam, sailed with a load including 60 tons of food to feed its 2,100-strong group of passengers over the Thanksgiving week back in 2022.
