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We already have our Black Friday and Cyber Monday purchases mapped out—hotel deals, in-flight beauty treatments, a piece of luggage or two, and a camera for that upcoming safari are all on the list. But when it comes to flight deals, neither day makes the cut as the best day to buy a cheap plane ticket. Turns out, the best day for discounts is actually a Tuesday.
Not so creatively known as "Travel Deal Tuesday," December 3 is packed full of, well, flight deals. According to flight tracker app Hopper, this price dip is because travel demands drop after Thanksgiving, and airlines want to appeal to those procrastinators who haven't yet planned their winter getaways. The numbers don't lie: the app found an average of 18 deals per second last year, sending 50 percent more deals to its users on Travel Deal Tuesday than any other day. All in all, Hopper is expecting travelers can save up to 40 percent on both domestic and international flights. For hotels, savings are a bit more modest but exclusive to Hopper's app, with an expected $50 to $100 off room bookings on December 3.
In a press release, Hopper outlined the cities it expects to be most discounted on Tuesday, from major urban hubs like London and Beijing to more adventurous destinations like Reykjavik and Costa Rica. Montreal, Sydney, and Cape Town are also among the destinations to watch, according to Hopper.
As these deals are expected to pop up throughout the day—a reminder that there's no perfect time to find a deal—Hopper recommends using its app (naturally) to find the best discounts. Its "Flex Watch" feature does most of the work for you. Just plug in preferences—ideal trip length, preferred month of travel, destination—and let the flight deals appear in your inbox. (Flights found using the feature are typically about 40 percent cheaper than average.)
Of course, Hopper isn't the only way to find a cheap flight or hotel. You can set free price trackers using Google Flights or Kayak; subscribe to flight deal blogs like Secret Flying, TheFlightDeal, Fly4Free, and Scott's Cheap Flights; sign up for airline's newsletters; or compare booking sites. Given that you have time to prep before the flight deal extravaganza kicks off, we suggest you do one—or all—of these things. You've been warned.
This post was last published in November 2018 and has been updated with new information.