Labor Day weekend is typically considered the unofficial end of the summer travel season, so it's a good time for a tourism industry check in.

Summer travel is supposed to be a major time for the tourism industry, and was forecast to be slow this year. But on both points, there's surprising news.

Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Eileen Crowley, who tracks the transportation and hospitality industry at the audit and advisory firm Deloitte, to learn more about this year’s summer travel trends.

The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Nova Safo: Has the summer travel season turned out as we expected?

Eileen Crowley: One of the biggest trends that we're seeing is that folks are actually taking more trips this summer and expected to. So you know, the trips might be a little bit quicker and shorter, but again, that prioritization of leisure travel is continuing for Americans, is what we're seeing.

Safo: So some signs of good news, but we are seeing some tweaks, perhaps to summer travel plans for Americans. What have those tweaks been? Besides the shorter, maybe quicker trips?

Crowley: You are definitely correct. I like to refer to our travelers this summer as more the budget conscious traveler, a little bit more frugal than perhaps in summers past. But they're doing, you know, less international trips. They're also thinking about spending less once they get to a destination. A number of our travelers that we surveyed actually are intending to travel after Labor Day, which typically has been the end of the, you know, summer defined travel season. And many are doing that because of the, you know, shoulder season being perhaps a little bit less expensive and keeping in line with their budgets.

Safo: Yeah, and airlines alluded to this in their are forecasts for the rest of the year, right? They're saying that they're seeing kind of the usually kind of heavy summer demand period kind of get, instead kind of spread out and thinned out a bit, and kind of spilling into the fall.

Crowley: We took a look back to our survey results from 2022 about travel post Labor Day, and there was about 12% of Americans that indicated they intended to take their marquee, or biggest trip of the summer season, after Labor Day. If you look at the results of our survey this year, in 2025 that percentage is closer to 23% so it's almost doubled in the last three years of our survey.

Safo: Considering kind of the shifting travel patterns and the expanding period of travel, what do you expect for the fall? Where are we headed?

Crowley: I think you'll see, like I mentioned, more travelers post Labor Day. They are intending to stretch that summer season out, in many regards, to get maybe perhaps a better pricing - whether it's hotels or airfares. And depending on how the economy continues to fare, you know, you could see some folks, some of our American travelers, staying with family and friends, actually, versus paid lodging. Again, it all surrounds the theme of a more frugal traveler, especially if they're feeling less financially secure.