Quiz
How Well Do You Know Travel Trends?
Eight questions on holiday travel, airfares, jet fuel and the dollar, scored from live data.
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Travel Pulse
Daily US air travel from TSA checkpoints, holiday travel year over year, airfare, hotel and jet fuel prices, travel advisories, the dollar abroad and travel industry layoffs. Curious Minds go Deeper.
Questions this answers
- Are airfares and hotels rising faster than inflation?
- Are more people flying than last year?
- How did Thanksgiving, July 4th and other holidays compare year over year?
- Where did travel advisories change, and how far does $1 go abroad?
Loading the latest data...
Free public data: TSA, BLS, EIA, State Dept, ECB, HK ImmD
Informational only, not travel, financial or safety advice. Data comes from the cited public sources and may lag or be revised. Always check travel.state.gov before traveling. Not affiliated with TSA, BLS, EIA, the State Department, the ECB or the Hong Kong government. Views are Martin's own, not his employer's.
TSA checkpoint volume, 7-day average
US holiday travel, year over year
All US holidays, latest year
TSA screenings in each windowGlobal holidays: Hong Kong border crossings
Arrivals plus departures at all Hong Kong control points. 2021 and 2022 reflect border closures, so 2023 gains are reopening effects. Source: Hong Kong Immigration Department via DATA.GOV.HK.
Airfare and hotel prices vs all items
12-month percent change, seasonally adjusted CPI. Source: BLS via FRED: Airline fares, Lodging away from home, All items.
Jet fuel, US Gulf Coast
Kerosene-type jet fuel spot price, dollars per gallon, daily. Source: EIA via FRED DJFUELUSGULF.
State Department travel advisories
Sorted by most recently updated. The feed lists the current level and update date; raises and lowers will be flagged once daily snapshots build up. Source: travel.state.gov.
What $1 buys abroad
Green means the dollar buys more local currency than a year ago. Source: European Central Bank reference rates via Frankfurter.
Travel and hospitality layoffs
WARN notices and reported layoffs from the Job Market Blueprint tracker, filtered to airlines, hotels and resorts, cruise and travel services. Each company links its original source.
Method
Holiday windows
Sources
- TSA checkpoint travel numbers: tsa.gov/travel/passenger-volumes (daily, 2019 on).
- Hong Kong Immigration Department daily passenger traffic: DATA.GOV.HK (daily, 2021 on).
- CPI: US Bureau of Labor Statistics (CUSR0000SETG01 airline fares, CUSR0000SEHB lodging away from home, CUSR0000SA0 all items; same series as FRED CPIAUCSL). Jet fuel: EIA via FRED DJFUELUSGULF.
- Travel advisories: travel.state.gov RSS feed. Exchange rates: ECB via Frankfurter.
- Layoffs: Job Market Blueprint tracker (state WARN filings and public reports).
- Live airport delays: FAA NAS Status. On-time: BTS (monthly, lagged; linked, not charted).
- Checked, not used: Eurostat monthly air passengers cannot isolate holiday weeks. Canada, UK and India daily holiday counts were not added because a free, current daily public series could not be verified. No STR or paid data.
Built by Martin Goetzinger, Enterprise Account Executive. Figures are computed from the cited sources at build time. Not investment or travel advice.
Ask your AI about this
Read https://www.martingoetzinger.com/pages/travel-pulse and tell me whether US air travel is up or down versus last year, how the next big holiday is likely to compare based on the past holiday year over year numbers, and whether airfares and hotels are rising faster than overall inflation. My trip: [route or destination] around [dates].
Paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity or Grok. AI answers can be wrong, so check the numbers on this page. Also try: Job Market Blueprint ยท Inflation Simulator.
Companion pieces
Go deeper on Travel Pulse
Quizzes, guides and answers built to go with this calculator.
4 Guides
Read the guides
- Travel Loyalty at Failure Points
- Trait Enrichment and Travel Loyalty
- The Three Dials of Inflation, Explained
- Inflation for Beginners: Why Prices Rise
FAQs
5 common questions, answered
- Where does the TSA number come from?
- How are the holiday windows defined?
- Why Hong Kong for global holidays?
Learn
Articles 4
- Travel Loyalty at Failure PointsWhy delays, overbooking and lost bags are when travelers leave.
- Trait Enrichment and Travel LoyaltyHow customer data shapes personalization and loyalty in travel.
- The Three Dials of Inflation, ExplainedMoney supply, supply shocks and expectations, with charts.
- Inflation for Beginners: Why Prices RiseThe three forces behind every price story, airfares included.
Frequently asked questions
Where does the TSA number come from?
TSA publishes the number of people screened at US airport checkpoints each day at tsa.gov. It counts screenings, not unique travelers or connecting passengers, and it does not include people who skip screening such as crew.
How are the holiday windows defined?
Each window is tied to the holiday so years compare fairly even when dates shift. For example, Thanksgiving week runs from the Saturday before through the Monday after Thanksgiving Thursday, and Memorial Day runs from the Thursday before through the Tuesday after. All windows are listed on the Methodology tab.
Why Hong Kong for global holidays?
Hong Kong's Immigration Department publishes free daily border crossing counts, which show Lunar New Year and China's Golden Week clearly. Comparable free daily data for Canada, the UK, Europe and India could not be verified, so it is not shown.
Is the airfare CPI the price of a ticket?
No. The BLS airline fares index tracks the change in fares paid over time, seasonally adjusted. It shows direction and pace, not the price of any route.
How often does this update?
Every day at about 9:30 AM ET, with a retry at 5:30 PM ET. TSA posts the prior day, jet fuel posts with a short lag, and CPI updates monthly. If a source is late, the page keeps its last good data and shows the date of each figure.
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