When-to-book strategies for summer travel

If you're planning an extensive trip this summer, my advice is that you should hold off buying air tickets and making hotel reservations until two or three months ahead of time. Just about everyone who follows the economic picture is predicting a continued slowdown or recession. In response, I look for overall travel demands this summer to be sharply weaker than last year, and the traditional supplier response to weakening demand is price-cutting. Given the cost pressures on airlines and hotels, however, their promotions are apt to have fairly short windows—both to buy and to travel. I've already received a flurry of promotional press releases for deals in March and April, and I'm expecting more. Be warned, however, that my take runs counter to some of the advice I've seen from good sources.

On the airline side, I'm looking for some action on fares to Europe. Right now, the big lines are still posting relatively high peak-summer fares, hoping to snare a good number of travelers at those rates. For example, I've seen June round-trips from Chicago to London listed at around $1,100, plus taxes and fees. As another example, for travel through March 31, Alitalia is promoting round-trips from Chicago or several East Coast gateways to major Italian cities for $552 to $644, including tax; posted fares for July are currently more than double those rates. If demand for travel to Europe turns out to be as weak as I expect, I just don't see how the airlines can sustain the peak fares they've posted in advance. To me, that means the odds are good that some lines will offer peak-season promotional deals at lower figures.

Domestic airfares are also likely to fluctuate. The airlines need to generate higher total revenues to offset increasing fuel costs, but they also need to generate enough passengers to fill seats. Predicting specific rises and falls in that environment is almost impossible, but before you buy, I suggest you log onto Farecast for some guidance. Farecast has also applied its prediction technology to a few popular international routes. Unfortunately, its predictions cover only a short purchasing window, and they won't do you much good yet for midsummer. For a long-term take on times when airfares may be lowest, log onto Hotwire's TripStarter.

Big European hotel chains are likely to do the same as the transatlantic airlines. A release from worldwide giant Accor, for example, showed promotional rates in popular European cities at well under €100 a night in the chain's midscale Mercure brand. A few properties in smaller cities are under €50. So far I haven't seen many of those "guaranteed" dollar rates at less than the current exchange rate, but I'm expecting to see some in a month or so. Domestically, I think rates will hold pretty well, especially at the budget end of the scale. Given the likely tightening of business travel budgets, however, you may see some good spring and summer promotions in a few of the upscale brands.

Clearly, my "wait and see" buying strategy requires that you keep a close eye on the travel marketplace. You can do that in several ways:

• Sign up for one or more of the free email newsletters from SmarterTravel: Weekly Last-Minute Airfares and Deal Alert, bi-weekly Cruise News, and monthly Student, Senior, and Family travel bulletins.
• Sign up with one of the big online agencies' fare notification programs: Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity all offer one or more free fare-tracking and deal-notification services.

As I noted at the outset, predicting when to buy is always a crapshoot: Will you lose out by waiting, or will you miss out on a promotion by buying early? Lots of my peers favor buying now; I'm still in the waiting camp. But it's your call.

(Editor's Note: SmarterTravel.com is a member of the TripAdvisor Media Network, an operating company of Expedia, Inc. Expedia, Inc. also owns Expedia.com and Hotwire.)