At the end of each summer for the past few years, we’ve been able to rely on having one or two final big booking days; the Friday and Saturday before Labor day. Search activity spikes, fueled by getaways, last minute bookings, deals, and millions of dollars in TV advertising. Google Trends captures this activity pretty nicely:

Labor Day 2015 may be a bit different though.

In 2014, Labor Day fell 31 days after August 1st. In 2015, Labor Day falls 37 days after August 1st. This means that consumers have almost another week to complete their research and bookings.

The last time Labor Day fell on September 7th was in 2009, and here’s how search activity looked:

A couple of things to note about this view:

1. The data is indexed to July of the corresponding year so as to keep the scales fairly close.
2. The data is “centered” to Labor Day, marked by a gray vertical line at 0.
3. You may notice 2009 has more peaks and valleys than 2014. These generally align with weekends. One trend we’ve seen in the last few years is that we’re getting more weekend traffic from mobile, so the weekday peaks are less pronounced.

Be ready to shift and think mobile

The difference is subtle, and open to different interpretations, but I believe what this shows is that in 2014 – when we had a shorter lead up to Labor Day – we saw a sharper jump in bookings Friday and Saturday than we had in 2009. On the other hand, in 2009 we had a smoother increase week over week and less of a spike toward the weekend.

Based on last year’s performance data, it might be tempting to flight your campaigns heavily towards Friday and Saturday.

Since Labor Day 2015 looks like Labor Day 2009 in the way it falls on the calendar, it may be worth planning on aggressively bidding earlier in the week when users are starting to execute their end of summer bookings. Being ready to capture these users could help you make the most of the softer slope if it happens this year.

This holiday we’ll see more bookings than ever come through mobile devices, so it may also be prudent to double check mobile links, make sure mobile strategies are set up and operating to expectations, and pacing is adjusted to make the most of the trend.

We should see how this is playing out as early as mid next week, so we’ll plan on revisiting this post then.