More US Parents Are Taking Their Kids Out of School to Save on Travel

The cheapest week to fly your family somewhere is almost never a week your kids have off. Travel-industry estimates put peak-season accommodation roughly 20% to 40% higher than the same rooms off-peak, and flights climb the same way whenever school is out and every other family is trying to travel. So a growing number of American parents are doing the obvious thing: booking when it is cheap and taking the kids out of school to travel.

Independent data backs up how common this has become. In a University of Southern California study reported by Chalkbeat, about a third of students named a family vacation or event as a reason they had missed school.

A recent survey by the travel-booking company Omio puts the number much higher. Atomik Research polled 1,000 US parents of children aged 5 to 18 in late July and early August, and 67% said they had already taken their kids out of school for a vacation, with another 24% saying they would consider it. That figure sits well above the independent measures, and it comes from a company that sells the trips, so the nine-in-ten headline reads as a marketing marker more than a hard count. The reason parents give is money: in the same survey, 92% said they would consider a term-time trip if it saved anything at all, and nearly half said savings under $1,000 would be enough to decide them.