Your peers over at the Fora travel agency are starting to see their clients make their fall and winter getaway plans, including for the ever-popular holiday travel period. Does what they see in their bookings match your bookings? Let’s take a look.
Fall Getaways
For Fora’s clients, it seems to be all about the long weekend, with fall trips booked averaging just three nights. Fora’s top booked cities this fall include: New York City, where the top booked hotels include Hotel Edison in Times Square, Park Lane Hotel and Freehand; London, where the Flemings Mayfair Hotel is proving to be quite the popular stay; Paris, with Hotel Dame des Artes one of Fora’s top-booked hotels; Rome, where Hotel Chapter Roma and The Hoxton, Rome are the most booked hotels; and Las Vegas where Wynn and Encore Las Vegas, The Cosmopolitan and ARIA all top the list for bookings.
Winter Getaways
While fall is all about long weekends in big cities, when Fora pulled booking data around the trendiest destinations for this holiday travel season, the agency found that the average trip length was a bit longer, at 4.6 nights, with warm weather as the main priority. The Dominican Republic and Mexico topped the list of international destinations, while Hawaii and Florida are the favorites in the U.S. Incidentally, room nights booked in Quintana Roo, Mexico, have grown by 30 percent in a year-over-year comparison.
Top-booked hotels on Fora in these destinations include: Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic; Grand Hyatt Kauai in Hawaii; Fairmont Orchid Hawaii in Hawaii; The Ritz-Carlton Oʻahu, Turtle Bay in Hawaii; and Viceroy Los Cabos in Mexico.
Underrated European Destinations
Fora advisors also have a few ideas when it comes to recommendations for lesser-known destinations in Europe. In Greece, they recommend Kea Island, located an hour by ferry from Athens and where Fora advisors point to the new One&Only property, and the Mandarin Oriental Costa Navarino, located about three hours by from Athens. In Tuscany, a top recommendation is the Fonteverde spa resort, while in France, they recommend Abbaye des Vaux de Cernay, located some 55 minutes from Paris. Slovenia is one destination that has been getting some airplay lately, not least of which because you can find the Kempinski Palace Portoroz Istria property and because it’s located only two hours from Venice, Italy. In fact, say Fora advisors, this is ideal for those clients who “love Italy but not the crowds or the prices.” Poland is an extraordinarily beautiful destination with a treasure trove of gems that tend to fly under the radar, including Warsaw’s Hotel Bristol, one of two hotels in the city that was untouched by war (psst: it’s also home to one of the top 100 bars in the world).
