The 2025 forecast on pricing: Mixed. Airfares are up, hotel rates are mostly flat and cruise lines are more likely to waive your gratuities than slash your fare.
Hayley Berg, the chief economist for the travel booking app Hopper, said, “Domestic airfares in 2025 are expected to remain above 2023 and 2024 levels until midyear at least.” She added that prices will likely be up by double digits for spring and summer compared to 2024, when domestic fares were some of the lowest on record.
Among the brights spots are international airfares, according to Kayak. The travel search company said that prices have recently fallen based on its search results, especially in Asia, where 2025 fares were down 7 percent compared to the same time in 2024, and the Caribbean, down 17 percent.
On the U.S. hotel front, rates, which rose only 1.6 percent in the first 11 months of 2024, according to the hospitality benchmarking firm STR, are expected to grow gradually — below the rate of inflation.
Luxury hotels are doing better than economy hotels, said Jan Freitag, the national director of hospitality analytics at CoStar Group, a commercial real estate market research firm. Guests can expect to see little change in economy rates, which are projected to rise a negligible .2 percent.
When it comes to cruises, strong demand is keeping prices high. Ships are sailing into the new year nearly full. An estimated 34.7 million travelers cruised in 2024, according to the Cruise Lines International Association, up 9 percent from 2023. Roughly 37 million are expected to cruise this year. The review website Cruise Critic found rates for summer 2025 cruises between three and 10 days long were up 6 percent on average since last summer.
Cruise ships prefer to offer incentives like prepaid gratuities and shipboard credits over fare cuts, said Jamie Cash, the general manager of Cruiseline.com, a cruise search and review website. “That creates value without creating an addiction to discounts,” Mr. Cash said.
