Hold the peaks, sell the shoulders. This is the exact playbook we're running on the homes we price for Thanksgiving through New Year's, and the data behind every call: 34,970 booked holiday nights across 366 U.S. markets and 260K+ competitor listing-nights. Copy any of it.
The short version
- Most of the holiday hasn't booked yet. At this point last year, only 34% of the Christmas nights and 34% of the New Year's Eve nights our listings eventually sold were on the books. Thanksgiving was at 68%.
- Early bookers pay the premium. Holiday nights booked a month or more ahead went for 1.5×–1.8× the listing's normal rate. Nights booked in the final week went for 1.0×–1.1×.
- New Year's Eve is the night to protect. It sold at a +55% premium last year and finished 69% booked. It also has the widest lead over last year in our book.
- The comps are underpricing the holidays. In our sample, 90% of Quibble-priced homes carry a bigger Christmas uplift than their comp sets (1.82× vs. 1.31×), and about half of those comps are already off the market. The 2026 calendar helps too: Christmas and New Year's Day both fall on a Friday.
- Fuel is the wild card. Gas is $4.22 (+38% vs. last Thanksgiving), jet fuel costs more than double what it did a year ago and airfare is up 15–30%. Flying a family costs about $340 more than last year, driving about $28 more. Drive-to markets have the edge.
- Read gap and pace together. Thanksgiving is behind last year (-1.8 pts) but picking up faster (+1.1 pts pace), so it's closing on its own. Use three-night minimums on the peaks and step them down as the nights get close: a third of homes left orphan nights unsold last year.
2026 lines the holidays up with weekends
Every holiday season gets compared with the last one, and that comparison breaks when the weekdays move. In 2025 Christmas and New Year's Day were Thursdays. Friday the 26th and Friday the 2nd were workdays for most people, so guests had to take PTO or cut the trip short.
In 2026 both holidays are Fridays. Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve are Thursday nights, which naturally become the first night of a three-night stay. In our data, New Year's Eve is the holiday furthest ahead of last year.
For pricing, that means stays get longer and the Thursday-night premium becomes real. If your last-year comparison treats December 31 as a Wednesday, it will underprice the Thursday and overprice the Sunday. Compare by holiday position, not by date.
Two-thirds of Christmas and New Year's hadn't booked yet
We took every booked holiday-season night on Quibble-priced U.S. homes last year: 34,970 nights from 8,829 stays across 366 markets in 42 states. Then we asked a simple question. On each holiday night, how far ahead was it booked?
Thanksgiving books early. By 25 days out, 68% of last year's Thanksgiving nights were already sold. Christmas and New Year's book late. At the same distance we're at today, only about a third of those nights were on the books.
of last year's Thanksgiving nights were booked by 25 days out, the same distance we're at today.
Quibble data, Wed–Sat nightsof Christmas Eve and Christmas nights were booked by 54 days out. The rest came later.
Quibble data, Dec 24–25 nightsof New Year's Eve nights were booked by 61 days out. Median lead time was 39 days.
Quibble data, Dec 31 nightThat's why a thin Christmas calendar in early November isn't a crisis. Christmas and New Year's guests decide late, and most of the demand you'll see hasn't shown up yet. The question for the final stretch isn't whether they'll come. It's what they'll pay when they do.
The premium gets paid early
To compare across very different listings, we indexed each holiday night's rate to that same listing's typical rate on ordinary nights in early November, early December and January. An index of 1.5× means the guest paid 50% more than that listing normally gets.
The pattern is the same for all three holidays. Guests who book a month or more ahead pay the holiday premium: 1.5× at Thanksgiving, 1.6× at Christmas and 1.8× on New Year's Eve. Guests who book in the final week pay about what the listing gets on any other night (1.0×–1.1×). Those final-week bookings were only 13%–15% of holiday nights.
Holding rate through the last few days won't do it. The premium comes from being priced for the holiday while the early, high-intent guests are still shopping.
So the final stretch has two jobs. Right now, for Christmas and New Year's, keep the holiday price in place, because about two-thirds of the demand is still coming and the guests who book now are the ones who pay for it. Inside the last week or two, step down on whatever is left. By then you're pricing against the listing's normal rate, not the holiday rate.
The gap: on the books today vs. this point last year
Same listings, same number of days out. Here is how much of each holiday is booked now compared with the same moment in 2025, and where 2025 finished.
| Holiday nights | Booked now (2026) | Same point 2025 | 2025 final |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thanksgiving (Wed–Sat) | 30.7% | 32.6% | 48% |
| Christmas (Dec 24–25) | 17.6% | 17.3% | 50% |
| New Year's Eve (Dec 31) | 26.3% | 23.2% | 69% |
On the conservative read, Thanksgiving is a little behind last year, Christmas is level and New Year's Eve is ahead. Counting last year's later cancellations, all three trail, but New Year's Eve is still the strongest of the three either way. The Friday New Year's Day likely helps. Across December as a whole, our listings are 11.3% booked against 12.4% at this point last year. December 2025 finished at 33%.
Regions differ a lot, though.
The pattern to watch is the distance between the gray dot and the white tick: how much of December normally books from here. In Appalachians & Southeast, Northeast & Mid-Atlantic and Midwest & Ozarks, less than a fifth of last December's final occupancy was on the books at this point. Those markets will look empty for weeks. That's normal, and discounting into it gives away rate on demand that hasn't arrived yet.
Pace: is the gap closing?
Gap is where you stand: what's on the books now vs. the same point last year. Most of the industry, and most AI summaries, call this "pace." It isn't.
Pace is how fast you're moving: occupancy picked up in the last 7 days vs. the same 7 days last year. Pace tells you what's about to happen to the gap. A listing can be behind on gap and ahead on pace, and the two call for opposite moves. That's why Quibble reports both. More on why the word matters: AI Is Killing the Word "Pace".
Here are both numbers for the holidays, for the same homes, as of Oct 31. Pickup is in occupancy points: the share of all listing-nights for that holiday that booked during the week.
| Stay period | Gap | Picked up, last 7 days | Same 7 days, 2025 | Pace | Read |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thanksgiving (Wed–Sat) | -1.8 pts | 3.3 pts | 2.2 pts | +1.1 pts | Behind, and closing |
| Christmas (Dec 24–25) | +0.3 pts | 1.5 pts | 0.8 pts | +0.7 pts | Level, and speeding up |
| New Year's Eve (Dec 31) | +3.1 pts | 1.9 pts | 1.8 pts | +0.1 pts | Ahead, holding |
| All of December | -1.0 pts | 1.0 pts | 1.1 pts | -0.1 pts | Slightly behind, steady |
It's closing on its own. Hold rate and give it a week. Thanksgiving is here.
This one needs a move. Loosen the minimum stay first, then price, starting with the shoulder nights.
Demand is stronger than last year and still accelerating. Raise floors.
Don't panic and don't discount. You sold early. Watch the comp set. New Year's Eve is here.
Quibble prices the holiday. Most comps barely do.
We compared the live OTA rate for a stratified sample of Quibble-priced homes from every portfolio, plus the rates of each home's ~30-listing comp set, for every night of November and December 2026. That's 260,226 competitor listing-nights. Then we measured how much each side lifts its rate on the holidays compared with its own ordinary nights.
of the Quibble-priced homes we sampled carry a bigger Christmas uplift than their own comp set. 88% do on New Year's Eve and 82% at Thanksgiving.
Quibble comp-set data, Oct 31, 2026Comp sets' holiday rate vs. their normal rate. Last year, early holiday bookers paid 1.5×–1.8×.
Quibble dataShare of each comp set already off the market (booked or blocked) for the holidays, vs. 34% on a typical night.
Quibble comp-set data| Holiday nights | Quibble uplift | Comp-set uplift | Comps off market | Sampled Quibble homes booked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thanksgiving (Wed–Sat) | 1.34× | 1.10× | 57% | 33% |
| Christmas (Dec 24–25) | 1.82× | 1.31× | 56% | 21% |
| New Year's Eve (Dec 31) | 1.85× | 1.37× | 52% | 29% |
| Typical night (Nov–Dec) | 1.0× | 1.0× | 34% | 14% |
The comp sets are pricing the holidays at 1.1×–1.4× a normal night. Last year's early holiday guests paid 1.5×–1.8×. That gap is money the comps are leaving on the table. It's also why our holiday prices sit above theirs: they're set to what holiday guests actually pay, not to a flat weekend bump.
Higher prices aren't slowing bookings. The Quibble-priced homes in our sample are already booked on 21% of Christmas nights and 29% of New Year's Eve, against 14% on a typical November or December night. Meanwhile, half the competition is already gone for those dates. Every comp that books or blocks leaves guests with one fewer alternative, so the late shoppers still to come will find less choice, not more.
The comps that underprice Christmas will sell out early to guests who would have paid more. Then they'll watch the late, high-intent guests book the homes that held their price.
Three nights on the peak, then step it down
Minimum stay is the other half of holiday pricing. Set it too short and one-night bookings carve up a week that would have sold as one long stay. Set it too long and the last few nights between bookings never sell. Last year's holiday stays show where the line is.
Median holiday stay at Christmas and New Year's, vs. 3 on a typical night. 72% of Christmas stays ran 4+ nights.
Quibble data, 2025Rate on 3-night New Year's stays vs. the home's normal rate, the highest of any stay length. 1-night stays paid 1.34×.
Quibble data, 2025Homes that ended Dec 19 – Jan 4 with at least one unsold 1–2 night gap between bookings. That's 557 orphan nights.
Quibble data, 2025Holiday guests book long stays on their own. Only 11% of Christmas stays and 13% of New Year's Eve stays were one or two nights, against 31% on an ordinary night. So a three-night minimum on the peak nights turns away very little demand, and it protects the stays that pay best. Three-night New Year's stays paid 1.76× the normal rate, more than 4+ night stays (1.56×) and far more than 1-night stays (1.34×). Going above three nights would cut into the stays that earn the most.
The cost of a rigid minimum shows up at the end. A third of homes finished the holiday window (Dec 19 – Jan 4) with an orphan gap: one or two empty nights stuck between bookings, too short for the minimum, with nobody able to book them. That's 9% of all the nights that went unsold in that window.
The homes we price are already set up for the first half of this. Across the homes in our sample, the median minimum stay on 2026 holiday nights is 3 nights, vs. 2 on an ordinary night, and 81% require three or more at Christmas. The second half is the ladder: step the minimum down as each night gets close.
| Days before the night | Minimum stay | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 15+ days | 3 nights | Protects the long, high-rate stays that book early |
| 8–14 days | 2 nights | Lets two-night gaps between bookings sell |
| 0–7 days | Listing default / gap rules | Sells the orphan nights a strict minimum would strand |
Fuel is this season's wild card
Getting there costs a lot more in 2026. Gas has been above $4 a gallon since late July. Jet fuel costs more than twice what it did a year ago, and airlines are passing part of it on in holiday fares. Guests are still traveling, but how they get there and how far they go are shifting.
National average for regular gas on Oct 29, 2026, with October on track to be the most expensive on record. It was $3.06 the Tuesday before Thanksgiving 2025 (+38%).
AAAU.S. jet fuel per gallon on Oct 22, the highest daily average in Argus data and more than double a year ago.
Argus via NPR, Oct 23, 2026Holiday airfare vs. last year. Hopper puts Thanksgiving up about 30% and Christmas up more than 20% ($452 average round trip). Going's estimate for domestic fares is +15–16%.
Hopper, GoingHoliday travelers who say higher airfares make them more likely to drive. Hertz holiday bookings are up 16% for Thanksgiving and 7% for Christmas–New Year's.
Hertz, Oct 29, 2026Central Florida travelers holding off on holiday plans to wait for lower prices. Of people who delayed past trips, 49% ended up paying more.
AAA survey, Sept 2026Both ways of getting there cost more, but not by the same amount. Expensive gas adds about $28 to a 300-mile drive each way. Expensive jet fuel adds about $340 to flying a family. When both go up, driving wins by a wider margin than it did last year. Expect the drive to stay reasonable while flights get trimmed: closer destinations, shorter stays, a cabin three hours away instead of a beach three time zones away.
Our December gap points the same way, though it can't prove the cause. Drive-to Appalachian and Southeast markets are booked at 14.5% against 7.2% at this point last year. Two fly-in regions are behind: the Florida peninsula is at 13.3% vs. 19.6%, and the Desert Southwest at 20.7% vs. 23.5%. It isn't a clean split. The Gulf Coast beaches, mostly a drive, are behind too, and the Rocky Mountains are ahead.
If you're within a tank of gas of a big metro, you're getting the travelers airfare pushed out. Price like it. If guests have to fly in, expect more price shopping and later decisions. Watch your comp set instead of matching the first discount you see.
Where the holiday demand lands
Holidays don't lift every market the same way. This year the College Football Playoff runs right through the holidays and into late January, and Puerto Rico's hotels were more than 90% full over New Year's last year. These are the dates to have on your calendar.
| Market | Date | What's happening | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Campus towns (Seeds 5–8 host) | Dec 18–19 | CFP first round on campus, a weekend that's usually soft before Christmas | Load an event for the weekend once the bracket is out. Short notice, but fans travel. |
| Glendale / Phoenix–Scottsdale | Wed, Dec 30 | Fiesta Bowl quarterfinal, 7:30 pm ET. It runs straight into New Year's Eve. | Treat Dec 29 – Jan 2 as one block. Hold until Selection Day, then price for the fan bases. |
| Pasadena · Arlington · Atlanta | Fri, Jan 1 | Rose, Cotton and Peach Bowl quarterfinals. Kickoff windows assigned Dec 6. | Stacks on the New Year's Day weekend. Push minimum stays toward three nights. |
| Miami Gardens | Thu, Jan 14 | Orange Bowl semifinal at Hard Rock Stadium | Midweek in a high-season market. Watch the two nights before the game. |
| New Orleans | Fri, Jan 15 | Sugar Bowl semifinal at the Superdome, falling on MLK weekend | A Friday game plus a federal-holiday Monday. Price it like a peak weekend. |
| Las Vegas | Mon, Jan 25 | CFP National Championship, Allegiant Stadium | A Monday game, so demand shifts to Sat–Sun arrivals. Set the minimum stay to cover Sunday night. |
| Western ski towns | Dec–Jan | December 2025: occupancy −2.8%, ADR +2.5%. Snow arrived late and guests waited. | Watch snowpack before cutting. Rate cuts didn't bring guests back last year. |
| Puerto Rico | Dec 30 – Jan 1 | Above 90% across officially endorsed lodging properties over New Year’s 2025–26 (preliminary). | Protect New Year's Eve. Last-minute discounts here only give away rate. |
Two markets, one lesson: discounts don't create demand
Two very different markets reported their December 2025 results in detail. Both show the same thing. Demand followed conditions and supply, not price cuts.
In the mountains, guests were waiting for snow, not for a lower price. Every price tier trimmed its rates in December and every tier still lost occupancy. The cuts didn't buy guests; they only gave up rate on the stays that came anyway. In Puerto Rico, demand rose but supply rose faster, so a host who matched every discount gave up rate and still didn't win the volume. In both cases, protecting peak nights would have done better.
That's this season's rule. Use price on the nights where it actually changes guest decisions: the shoulder nights, the orphan gaps and the dead week between holidays. Hold it on the nights guests will book no matter what.
Our playbook, window by window
This is how we're running each holiday block on the homes we price, as of October 31. Use it as-is or adapt it to your markets. "Hold" means keep floors and peak rates in place. "Wait" means don't react before the signal is reliable. "Flex" is where price and minimum-stay changes earn their keep.
| Block | Nights | Days out | Posture | Moves |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thanksgiving | Wed Nov 25 – Sat Nov 28 | 25–28 | Hold | About 68% of the demand is already in, and the rest arrives over the next three weeks. Hold Wednesday and Friday–Saturday through about 10 days out, then step Thursday and Sunday down first. Final-week bookers paid 1.0× normal rate last year, so price what's left in the last week against that, not the holiday rate. Open two-night minimums to fill orphan gaps. |
| Christmas | Thu Dec 24 – Sat Dec 26 | 54–56 | Hold | Only about 34% booked at this point last year. Early bookers paid 1.6×. Keep the holiday price and floors in place and recheck gap and pace Dec 1–10. Aim for a three-night minimum on Thu–Sat. |
| Dead week | Sun Dec 27 – Wed Dec 30 | 57–60 | Flex | Between two peaks, with no holiday to anchor it. This is where shorter minimum stays and targeted rate moves belong. Arizona is the exception: the Fiesta Bowl lands on Dec 30. |
| New Year's | Thu Dec 31 – Sat Jan 2 | 61–63 | Hold | The biggest premium (+55%), and the widest lead over last year. Raise floors, require three nights on Thu–Sat and don't hand rate back for early fills. Early bookers paid 1.8×. |
| Last 7 days, any holiday | Whatever's left | 0–7 | Flex | Final-week bookings were 13%–15% of holiday nights and paid 1.0×–1.1× normal rate. Step down to sell the gap, don't wait for a holiday premium that comes earlier. |
| CFP markets | Dec 18 – Jan 25 | From Dec 6 | Wait | Matchups and kickoff windows are set on Selection Day, Sun Dec 6. Hold until then, then price for who's actually traveling. |
How we run this in Quibble
The playbook above is what our pricing engine and our customers' revenue managers do every season:
- Holiday events with per-night multipliers and minimum stays, so Thursday, New Year's Eve and the Sunday after aren't priced as one flat block.
- Multiplier exemptions keep owner stays and contracted nights out of holiday uplifts.
- Gap and 7-day pace for every listing, group and portfolio, against last year and against the comp set.
- Event minimum-stay ladders step a holiday's minimum stay down as the night gets close, so the tail of the window can still book.
- Market intel, including inbound flight data, shows when demand is coming before your calendar fills.
Sources
- Going, "2026 Holiday Travel Outlook," Oct 7, 2026. prnewswire.com
- Hopper, "2026 Holiday Travel Index." media.hopper.com
- Hertz, "Hertz Survey Reveals How Travelers Are Adapting Their Holiday Plans Amid Higher Travel Costs," Oct 29, 2026. newsroom.hertz.com
- AAA weekly gas price releases: "Gas Prices Dip Before Halloween," Oct 29, 2026; "National Average Falls 6 Cents, But Crude Oil Nears $100/Barrel," Oct 22, 2026; "Gas Prices Keep Climbing, National Average Jumps 15 Cents," July 23, 2026. Oct 29 · Oct 22 · July 23
- AAA national average, Nov 25, 2025, as reported with GasBuddy's Thanksgiving outlook. wrdw.com
- NPR, "Jet fuel prices hit a record and holiday airfares soar higher," Oct 23, 2026 (Argus jet fuel data; Hopper airfare figures). npr.org
- AAA holiday travel survey, as reported by News 6 Orlando, Sept 16, 2026. clickorlando.com
- College Football Playoff, 2026–27 and 2027–28 bowl sites and dates. collegefootballplayoff.com · FBSchedules
- Inntopia DestiMetrics, December 2025 Market Briefing. corp.inntopia.com · Winter 2025–26 close via SnowSports News
- Caribbean Journal, "Puerto Rico Hotels Are Reporting Exceptionally High Occupancy for Year-End Holidays," Dec 31, 2025 (Puerto Rico Tourism Company preliminary data). caribjournal.com
- Quibble pricing data: 8,829 booked stays (34,970 nights) on Quibble-priced U.S. homes in 366 markets across 42 states, checking in Nov 1, 2025 – Jan 20, 2026. 2026 bookings, December regional gap and comp-set rates (a stratified sample of homes from every portfolio, each with its own ~30-listing comp set, 260,226 competitor listing-nights) as of Oct 31, 2026. Aggregated; no individual listing or company is identified.
- Discover Puerto Rico, research updates, January 2026. discoverpuertorico.com
Method. Quibble figures cover booked and modified reservations on Quibble-priced US listings. Cancellations, inquiries and owner stays are excluded, and so are listings outside the U.S. Holiday nights are Wed–Sat of Thanksgiving week, Dec 24–25 and Dec 31. A night's rate is the stay's rent divided by nights, indexed to the same listing's median rate on non-holiday nights (Nov 3–19, Dec 1–18, Jan 5–20). "Same point last year" uses the same number of days before each night. Regional December gap comes from Quibble Market Analytics, grouped so no individual company is identifiable. Comp-set comparisons use OTA-displayed rates for both the Quibble listing and its comps, and each holiday rate is indexed to the same listing's (or comp set's) median rate on ordinary nights (Nov 3–19 and Dec 1–18, 2026). Minimum stays are each sampled home's own setting on the night. Public figures are as published by the sources listed. "Nights" are check-in dates, so check-out is the following day. Calendar weekdays are computed. The playbook is Quibble's recommendation, not a forecast.