Abstract
While the summer vacation is common across age groups and race/ethnicity, the winter holiday traveler has a more distinct demographic profile, skewing towards older adults, the affluent, and couples. This Mintel report explores in greater detail which consumers are more likely to take winter vacations, whom they travel with, how they travel, and where they go.
From 2000 to 2005, one in five leisure trips in the U.S. was taken during the winter, according to the Travel Industry Association of America (TIA). Summer and spring travel has traditionally accounted for the lionfs share of leisure trips, but winter holiday travel is slowly but surely growing in popularity. In fact, the number of winter leisure person-trips taken increased by 15% from 2000 to 2005, despite significant obstacles including airline computer failures and work stoppages and harsh winter storms.
Mintel expects that suppliers of travel-related services have the potential to grow their business by molding services to meet the needs of distinct travel groups, as outlined in this report. Mintelfs finding that the average winter vacation lasts about four days means that suppliersf messages will need to be compelling to compete for the short amount of time that consumers have for winter travel.
In this report, Mintel clearly identifies the principal external factors driving or curtailing growth. Exclusive consumer research reveals the attitudes, needs and behavior of consumers, with analysis broken down both by demographic characteristics, and by segment.
Six years of specific sales data provide a factual and impartial presentation of the market as a whole. Mintel also evaluates the performance of individual sectors in the market, and provides information about the major companies and brands. Using the SPSS forecasting package, Mintel creates a five-year forecast of U.S. retail sales, revealing potential opportunities for growth and product development. | 
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