Booking.com Survey: 90% of US Travelers Say the Cheapest Trip Is Not the Best

Nine in ten American travelers say a good trip is not always the cheapest one, according to new Booking.com research that cuts against the discounting reflex behind a lot of rate strategy.

The survey was run for Booking.com by HarrisX among 1,332 US travelers between 6 and 11 August 2026. It found that 87% agree cheap travel can end up being expensive and 90% say a good trip is not always the cheapest. What travelers said they value instead was avoiding hassles (90%), memorable experiences (67%) and relaxing without worry (67%).

The spending behaviour behind those attitudes is the more striking part. Nearly half of respondents (48%) said they had taken on extra work or a side job to afford a trip. Thirty-nine percent had charged a trip without knowing how they would pay it off, and 36% had hidden the true cost of a trip from a partner. Forty-six percent spent more than planned on their most recent trip and 36% avoided checking their bank or credit card balance after getting home. Even so, 88% said the expenses felt worth it once they were back, and 94% said certain experiences make a trip worth every penny.

Payment flexibility looks like the load-bearing element in all of this. Sixty-nine percent of travelers said they had used flexible payment options such as installment plans or buy-now-pay-later services. Nearly one in four (24%) said they would be likely to give up travel entirely if those options were not available. For anyone selling a stay, that is a direct line between what sits on the checkout page and whether the booking happens at all.

Travel also now outranks material spending in this sample. Eighty-four percent call travel an investment in their quality of life, 80% say it brings more satisfaction than buying goods, and 68% would rather cut day-to-day expenses than cut a trip. Sixty-nine percent said they feel less guilty spending on travel than on other purchases.

"Travel continues to be a priority, even as people reassess their spending," said Ian Ackland, Managing Director, Americas at Booking.com.

Read the source of the data

It is worth being clear about where the research points. Booking.com closes the release by directing travelers to its own Genius programme, its Getaway Deals promotions and the Booking.com Genius Rewards Visa Signature Card. The buy-now-pay-later finding sits alongside payment products the company already sells, and the conclusion that convenience beats price is a conclusion a large OTA has a commercial interest in reaching. None of that makes the numbers wrong. It does mean the framing is not neutral.

The methodology is at least disclosed, which is more than many OTA surveys manage. Respondents were recruited through opt-in web panel sampling, could answer in English or Spanish, and were defined as people who took at least one overnight leisure trip in the past year. The sampling margin of error is plus or minus 2.7 percentage points, with larger margins for subgroups. Results were weighted by gender, age, race and ethnicity, region and income.

For operators the practical read is that cutting rate may be the wrong first move with this segment. If nine in ten guests say the cheapest trip is not the best trip, and the same share say avoiding hassle matters, the room to compete is in removing friction and giving guests confidence in what they are buying, not in undercutting the property next door.