Bing Holiday Travel Forecast Brings Joy, Deals to Family Trips For Thanksgiving & the Season

Travel

With Thanksgiving just around the corner and the Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and New Years holiday celebrations blowing right in behind, chances are good that your family or someone you know will be traveling this season. These days with the economy still stuck in first gear, saving money by making frugal decisions even on extras like trips and vacations are the norm, especially for moms and dads traveling with children. So it's refreshing to hear some upbeat news to maintain the holiday spirit that I'd like to share with you.

My 10 month-old appears to be hitching a ride in the airplane baggage overhead compartment

Vintage digital family picture by Janis Brett Elspas, MommyBlogExpert.com

Predicting a bit of holiday cheer for travelers -- particularly families with kids creating multiple expenses -- the Fareologists at Bing Travel have issued their preliminary forecast for the 2011 holiday travel season. Here's the good part: Bing expects domestic airfare and hotel room prices to drop slightly this winter translating into consumer savings.

According to Bing Travel

• Compared to 2010, domestic airfare is expected to be down 1.4% overall
• Plane tickets will average about $302 this season, as opposed to $306 last holiday
• Hotel seasonal costs appear to be staying virtually flat for three- and four-star hotels, but five-star hotels are down 8% from last year

“Given this summer’s sharp airfare and hotel increases, it’s a relief to see travel prices normalize, even going down in many cases this holiday,” says Kari Dilloo of Bing Travel who is also the mother of twin toddlers.

“Travelers looking to stay in the U.S. are likely to find some great trip deals this holiday especially if they plan ahead, Dilloo explains."When you are traveling with parents plus multiple kids smart travel buying can amount to spending hundreds of dollars less on your holiday or vacation expenses."

While the overall travel forecast is looking merrier and somewhat brighter this season, the biggest savings lie in the hands of those willing to let the destination and date dictate your holiday travel plans. In fact, Dilloo points out that a traditional white Christmas might not be available in Florida, but getaways to the Sunshine State and other warm-weather destinations are extra cheap this holiday season. Some examples: airfares to Fort Lauderdale, FL, are down 21% from last year and hotels in Las Vegas are down almost 16% this year.

How Bing Travel Can Help

The free tools and tips that  Bing Travel offers are just what moms and dads traveling with children need to save time and money when shopping for and booking holiday trips. That's where Bing's Price Predictor comes in: it's an invaluable airfare prediction tool that shows whether the lowest fares appear to be rising or dropping and provides recommendations on whether to buy now or wait.

Tapping its proprietary technology, the Bing Travel site has the ability to analyze 225+ billion airfare observations. The result is that they can provide recommendations with a level of confidence and also give you a feel for expected price increases or decreases over the next seven days.

Similarly, their Hotel Rate Indicator helps traveling consumers find out at a glance if the offered room charge for a hotel is a good deal, based on historical rates. This price indicator is unique to Bing Travel and is available for more than 5,000 hotels in 30 major cities across the U.S. and applies to reservations up to 90 days in the future.

For more tips on Holiday Family Travel don't miss my upcoming Social Moms column on technology and apps to help keep you sane and saving money when traveling with kids this season. 

Bing, representing a new generation of search -- was developed to deliver results in a visually stunning way that makes it easy for users to find the information they need. Designed with today’s searchers in mind, Bing, a Microsoft company, provides intelligent tools to simplify tasks and help people make faster and better decisions.

Feel free to share your own experiences about shopping airfares and hotel rooms for your family.  Also, if you've tried Bing Travel, what do think of this relatively new service so far?

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FTC Disclosure: Janis writes a weekly column for SocialMoms.com. However, MommyBlogExpert did not receive any payment or other compensation associated with this post from any mentioned company. See complete FTC Disclosure information that appears at the bottom of MommyBlogExpert's main page and at the bottom of every individual post on this blog, including this one.