Shoppers in the United States are generally aware of Black Friday – the day after the Thanksgiving holiday, when many retailers offer special, one-day deals and discounts.
NB: This is an article from McKinsey & Co.
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Lore holds that this late-November day got its name because it’s when many retail stores’ annual ledger sheets at last emerge from the red (meaning losses) and get into the black (meaning profits).
The considerable consumer attention on Black Friday has spurred similar marketing efforts tied to nearby days. The day after Black Friday has become known as Small Business Saturday – it got its start in 2010 as part of an effort by American Express to encourage shoppers to frequent small, independent stores. Two days after that comes Cyber Monday, which got its name in 2005 when the National Retail Federation noticed that many consumers continued to shop for holiday gifts online after the weekend had ended.
The latest entrant in this category of Thanksgiving-adjacent, calendar-linked marketing pushes is Travel Tuesday – a day on which shoppers can find deals on purchases such as hotel stays or airline flights. In a 2018 article, the New York Times credited the online-booking platform Hopper with popularizing the Travel Tuesday concept.1
Over the past two years, Travel Tuesday has gained increasing interest from consumers who are on the hunt for travel bargains. Travel industry players can potentially benefit from paying close attention to this burgeoning phenomenon – which, in 2024, will occur on Tuesday, December 3 – by finding ways to shape relevant promotions and campaigns around it.
Here are some Travel Tuesday data points to consider.
Online search interest tied to Travel Tuesday is growing
The volume of Google searches for the term “Travel Tuesday” has been growing in the past few years. Search interest in the term “Cyber Monday” remains more than ten times greater than interest in Travel Tuesday – but while searches for Cyber Monday are on the decline (perhaps because the concept is well established in consumers’ minds at this point), searches for Travel Tuesday showed a more than five fold increase over a two-year period.
