Rising costs reshape how remote workers travel this summer

Nearly a third of Americans with summer travel plans say rising prices could push them to rethink those trips, according to new polling published Monday by The Points Guy. The survey, conducted with YouGov from May 19 to 21, found that 32 percent of travelers would reconsider summer travel if costs keep climbing.

The data comes as summer travel costs run about 27 percent higher than a year ago, The Points Guy reported, citing the YouGov fieldwork of 2,344 U.S. adults, including 1,126 with summer travel plans.

Context

Despite the sticker shock, most travelers are not staying home. Seventy-one percent said they plan to travel about the same or more than last summer, and 48 percent of Americans surveyed plan a summer trip at all. Among those still going, the survey found a clear split: 38 percent are making no changes to spend less, while the rest are trimming where they can.

The cost-cutting behaviors are telling. Twenty-eight percent said they are choosing cheaper destinations or shortening trips, 26 percent are changing how they travel — driving instead of flying, for example — and another 26 percent are cutting back on activities. For travelers who plan to scale back overall, the top deterrents were economic insecurity, cited by 39 percent, and higher airfare, cited by 30 percent, according to the YouGov data reported by The Points Guy.

The throughline is that price, not desire, is the constraint. Travelers want to go; they are recalibrating how.

What this means for remote workers and nomads

The behaviors the survey describes — picking cheaper destinations, shortening trips, swapping flights for cheaper routes — are exactly the levers remote workers already control better than the average summer traveler. The difference is leverage. A vacationing family is locked into school-calendar peak weeks and round-trip flights. A remote worker is not.

That flexibility is the edge. The survey's 27 percent cost jump hits hardest during the June-to-August crush; nomads who can shift a trip into the shoulder season sidestep the worst of it. Where the average traveler shortens a one-week trip to save money, a working traveler can do the opposite — stay longer in a lower-cost base, where monthly rents and slow-travel discounts drive the per-day cost down rather than up. Choosing a cheaper destination is not a downgrade when your income is location-independent; it is a strategy, and one we have mapped before in our guide to working remotely from Southeast Asia and our roundup of the best places in Colombia for digital nomads.

The 30 percent who cited airfare as a deterrent point to the other advantage: timing. Booking outside fixed vacation windows means more fare flexibility, the ability to wait out a price spike, and room to route through cheaper hubs. The survey captures a population reacting to costs in real time. Remote workers can plan around them instead — for more on stretching a travel budget this year, see our breakdown of how to save thousands on travel in 2026.

Sources

• "New polling: 32% of travelers say they will reconsider summer travel if prices keep rising" — The Points Guy. thepointsguy.com (accessed June 2, 2026)

• TPG and YouGov summer travel survey — YouGov. yougov.com (accessed June 2, 2026)