Why I Sit Out Travel Tuesday

By Robert McGarvey

Black Friday, Cyber Monday and now there is Travel Tuesday. Do you have your credit cards out and ready to snare boffo travel deals on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving?

I do not.  I’ll tell you why.  I buy when I want to, not when merchants want me to.  It’s that simple.

I also have never joined a Black Friday scrum at WalMart, tho the sheer chaos of the hurly burly is strangely appealing to me. Nonetheless I do not want to fight to score a bargain on a big screen TV I will rarely if ever watch.

As for Cyber Monday, it was created – back in 2005 – to stimulate consumer interest in shopping online and doesn’t that now seem a quaint idea?  Rarely does a day pass for me when some item I have bought – typically from Amazon, but also REI, occasionally WalMart and still other sellers get in the mix – doesn’t arrive at my door. I really don’t know who needs a Cyber Monday today.  

Which brings us to Travel Tuesday which, Google’s BARD AI engine tells me, was invented by Hopper in 2017.  Supposedly, Travel Tuesday has 50% more travel deals than Black Friday. The question has to be: Do you want any?

The other question is: Can you actually score them?

This coming year my personal travel interests are narrow and specific.  I already have four camping weekends planned and this will take me from Sedona to Organ Pipe National Monument and Joshua Tree. I will schedule more as the year evolves. I also have plans for a summer month in Madrid (yes, I know it’s hot but I live in Phoenix and needn’t say more). And a family trip to Virginia. That’s busy enough for my personal travel schedule.

That’s not to say I am closed to additional travel opportunities but if I were to buy on Travel Tuesday I would want a deal.  Something compelling. Will I find one?

Four years ago Travel + Leisure ran a story with this hed: “‘Travel Tuesday’ Might Not Be the Best Time to Find a Flight Deal After All.”

That’s to be expected.  With so many of us expecting to score real deals, sure, travel providers will shovel all kinds of stuff out to us with a banner waving “Travel Tuesday” deals and, as P.T. Barnum may have said (or may not have but he should have), a sucker is born every minute. We are bombarded with messaging – both advertising and ‘journalism’ – that tells us there are big deals to be had on Travel Tuesday so why wouldn’t we expect what we see online to be just that, a good deal?

Hopper, meantime, is busily shouting about the deals it anticipates seeing on Travel Tuesday – and some are indeed tasty such as half off Bali hotels, flight deals to Bali, London, Paris, and, even better, Hopper lets users of its mobile app set price alerts so that when a deal in fact posts to a destination you’ve flagged you’ll be alerted and, presumably, will have a decent change of snaring it before it vanishes.  That Hopper wrinkle – the price alerts – is a good feature for bargain hunters. If you are determined to play the Travel Tuesday sweepstakes, download it. Let Hopper do the hunting for you.

I stress that because there will be innumerable travel “bargains” to sort through. Many will be dross dolled up to appear to be bargains and many will get bought by the unobservant.

Hyatt for instance has 20% off at participating hotels in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East for travel booked by December on stays that take place by April 30.  To which I say big deal.  Travel already is slowing to many international destinations and winter always is a cheap time to travel just about anywhere. If you want to travel in the winter you will just about always find deals, no need to shop on Travel Tuesday.

In a casual search I already see many, many similar “deals.”

For Travel Tuesday to have any purpose, we need better.

Such as? Rather than see lots of deals that hold no interest for you, more good advice is to follow the social media accounts of travel providers that intrigue you. Very likely they will announce deals on their own channels on Travel Tuesday.

But – above all – know what deals you really want before you go hunting.  It just is too easy to think, wow, 75% off a Bayonne motel, I gotta grab this.  Some offers are cheap because, well, that’s the most they will bring in.

Happy searching – you just may score big!

Me, I’ll sit this out. When bargain hunters are out in numbers I take that as my signal to lay back.