The Bottom Has Fallen Out of Many Vacation Offers on Departures Between Now and Christmas

Thanksgiving is now behind us, December 1 looms ahead, and the twenty-some-odd days between December 1 and just before Christmas is the slowest period in all of travel. Except in New York City, whose remarkable stores attract tons of tourists for Christmas shopping, virtually every other destination in America and Europe is largely devoid of tourists during that three-week period. If you can possibly arrange a vacation in the immediate weeks to come, you will enjoy some of the best travel conditions -- lightly-booked planes, uncrowded hotels and restaurants, lightly-booked sightseeing attractions -- of the year.
 
Nothing could better illustrate this than the current price of a $686 round-trip airfare between New York and Singapore (including all government fees and taxes, and fuel surcharge) currently offered by Delta Airlines (see www.airfarewatchdog.com ). And in the cruise market, even sharper discounts are currently available on standard sailings of the Caribbean. Go to the website of any cruise discounter (like www.vacationstogo.com ) and you'll currently find a 7-night cruise of the Caribbean leaving round-trip from New Orleans in the early-December period (on the Carnival Conquest ), on which inside cabins are being offered for $219 per person -- a discount of 87%! That particular offer (it's for $30 a day!), good for the departure of December 4, is surely a world's record. And almost as good is the price for the departure of the same ship in the very next week (December 11) for only $309 -- a discount of 81% (about $44 a day).
 
So if you have a week's vacation lying around, now is the time to travel.