The magic of a spring break trip to Disney World in Florida to see the iconic princess Cinderella has eluded Andi Guevara and her 7-year-old daughter for the last three years.
Guevara and her husband held out during the pandemic for restrictions and masking requirements to lift before planning the Dallas family’s first trip to Disney World.
“We just decided to take other trips elsewhere,” said Guevara, 34, who is flying out of Dallas Love Field on Southwest Airlines on Friday. “We wanted to wait until Disney World was kind of ‘back to its normal activities’ and all that, and so that’s why we chose this year. We’ve traveled still even during the pandemic with masks and all.”
They’ll be among big crowds taking to the air for the first “normal” spring break since 2019, finally free from three years of travel restrictions, global shutdowns and coronavirus variants. Experts and analysts say there is pent-up demand from travelers to get back to regular spring break vacations, whether that be sunny beach trips, chilly trips up North or visits back home with family members.
That means airlines, hotels and destinations will be more crowded with travelers who shunned flying during the pandemic.
Hayley Berg, lead economist at Hopper, said high demand also will mean higher prices for airfare.
“It’s going to be [a] really busy spring break season, domestic and international,” Berg said. “Prices are going to start rising very rapidly.”
Where to?
Despite inflation and other economic concerns, Berg said 60% of spring break travelers are expecting to pay $500 or more for their trip. About one-third will spend over $1,000.
“People generally booked travel a lot closer to the departure date coming out of the pandemic, but that means that they’re likely to pay slightly higher prices,” Berg said. “Oftentimes with airfare and hotel stays in leisure destinations, the best prices are actually available weeks or months,” before March and April.
Mauricio Cervantes, marketing and communications specialist for South Padre Island’s Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the popular Texas Gulf Coast getaway hosted 2.1 million visitors last March.
Collegiate spring breakers are the main visitors to South Padre every year, but they’ll be joined by different kinds of beachgoers this year.
“We’ve been seeing a lot more families, even during spring break or within the month of March,” Cervantes said. “More families are renting out those larger [beach houses]” while college students tend to book hotels or resorts.
College-aged spring breakers will also be drawn by headliners Steve Aoki, Lil Wayne and Kodak Black at Clayton’s South Padre Island Beach Bar, which describes itself as the largest beach bar in Texas.
Carriers have noticed families flying more often and enacted new policies to help them sit together on flights, prompted by pushes from federal regulators.
Fort Worth-based American Airlines is guaranteeing that children will be seated next to an accompanied adult. United Airlines also introduced a feature to help families with children under 12 find seats together. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said the Department of Transportation will publish a “family seating dashboard,” showing which airlines offer that guarantee to families for free.
North Texas destinations such as Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine also are looking forward to a 2023 spring break free from the burdens of recent years.
Last year, Great Wolf experienced staffing shortages during spring break, which closed some attractions. This year, it’s fully staffed and the hotel and indoor water park will host a “Spring Break Out” to kick off vacation time with the family. The spring break events will include tropical decorations throughout the waterpark, yoga, crafts and more.
“We’re seeing a lot of growth on days that we were normally not,” Travis Taylor, assistant general manager at Great Wolf Lodge Grapevine said.
Airlines for America, a trade group of commercial air carriers, is projecting this year to be air travel’s busiest ever, with an estimated 158.4 million expected to fly — or roughly 2.6 million people a day. It credits larger aircraft.
That’s more passengers than airlines saw in 2019, despite fewer flights this year due to pilot shortages across the industry. That means there will be about 5.5% more passengers on each flight than in 2019, according to the airline trade group.
Texas A&M University nursing student Nicole Stockton and her friends are looking to take a break right before graduation for the first time since 2020.
Stockton, 23, recalls being in New Orleans during spring break while she was an undergrad at Texas A&M in 2020 and being worried she wouldn’t make it back to College Station when the world was shutting down.
“We were in New Orleans going to Target trying to find stuff to clean our hotel with and that’s just gonna be engraved in my mind,” said Stockton, an Anna resident. “Life’s been kind of crazy since COVID.”
She’ll be flying out of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport with a group of friends to head to Boston for a four-day spring break.
Travelers visiting Dallas this month will arrive at one of the busiest times of the year for the city, said Craig Davis, president and CEO of Visit Dallas. January, February and March are the “biggest months” for Dallas, he said.
Davis said Visit Dallas has a “theory” that business travelers will bring family along for trips, taking a longer weekend or an extra few days to explore a new city.
“They do a combination, which has become a phenomenon that has gotten stronger during COVID.”
Typically mild winters, a large airport and an easy drive make Dallas “a perfect match” for vacationers, he said.
Airbnb data shows stays in Dallas have significantly increased this spring, compared with the same period in 2022, based on searches made for check-ins from March 1 to April 30.
Be ready to pay more this year
One of the most popular destinations for U.S. travelers continues to be Mexico’s sandy beaches in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean. In 2022, 13 million U.S. tourists visited the neighboring country. The top destination was Cancún and the Mayan Riviera, which received 2.4 million visitors, according to Mexico’s tourism office.
Demand for spring break in Mexico has spiked 25% compared with last year, Hopper’s Berg said.
“Typically, airfare to Mexico is a lot less expensive than airfare to Europe or to Asia, some of those longer haul destinations,” Berg said. “The exchange rate has historically been pretty advantageous for U.S. travelers so it can present a really nice budget option for travelers who are looking to get away, maybe experience new food, culture, cities, but can’t afford or don’t want to spend the couple thousand it might take to go to Europe or to Asia.”
Mexico has some travel advisories in place due to increased crime in some areas. Travelers should “exercise increased caution” when traveling to Mexico City, Quintana Roo and Veracruz, among others, the State Department warns.
A trending region for spring break are Asian cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai, Jakarta, Osaka and Tokyo, according to data from Hopper. These areas reopened during the pandemic a lot later than other international travel destinations, and there’s “pent-up demand,” Berg said.
The busiest days to travel this month and in April will be Fridays, Thursdays and Saturdays, in that order, Berg said.
“A piece of advice that I have for anyone who wants to fly for spring break and hasn’t booked yet or maybe booked with $0 change fees is to try to fly Tuesday or Wednesday if you’re flying domestically,” Berg said. “And Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday if you’re flying internationally.”
Travelers can save upwards of $92 on average if they fly domestically by choosing those days to fly and upwards of $150 internationally. It’s a trade-off by having to take time off or make schedule arrangements, but it’s a guaranteed way for travelers to save, Berg said.
Heather Daniel, 36, and her family have had their spring break trip to New York booked for a while now, because they wanted to see The Lion King on Broadway. One of her sons will be performing in May in Disney Junior’s version of The Lion King in Dallas.
“We do want to travel,” Daniel said. “We did road trips during COVID. We went to Colorado. We went to New Mexico. We even went to Galveston, like little places we could drive during the COVID times because our boys do like to go see and do things.”
She said her family has made sure to take trips when they can, saving miles or seeing different places to stay. She said her husband and their two sons try to have “the most full experiences on the best dollar.”
“When a good opportunity presents itself, we tried to make the best out of our situation and do as much as we can within our budget,” Daniel said.
