Trying to save on travel this year? Consider "detour destinations" — often-overshadowed places near perennial hotspots worth a closer look for the budget-conscious or crowd-weary.

Why it matters: Travel prices rose 14% from November 2019 to November 2024, per a recent NerdWallet analysis, leaving many searching for cheaper ways to get away.

Driving the news: "Detour destinations" will be a big 2025 travel trend, predicts Expedia's annual year-ahead outlook.

• "63% of consumers say they are likely to visit a detour destination on their next trip."
• Among Expedia's trending "detour destinations:" Reims, France (detour from Paris); Brescia, Italy (detour from Milan); Cozumel, Mexico (detour from Cancun); Santa Barbara, California (detour from Los Angeles) and Waikato, New Zealand (detour from Auckland).

Zoom in: Some travelers are embracing what Expedia calls "goods getaways," or traveling in search of a viral item they can't find back home — that chocolate bar from Dubai, for instance.

• "When going on vacation, 39% of travelers visit grocery stores or supermarkets and 44% shop for local goods they can't get at home."

What they found: Booking.com's own list of trending destinations includes Sanya, China; Trieste, Italy; João Pessoa, Brazil; Tromsø, Norway and Willemstad, Curaçao.

Reality check: As much as travelers gripe about rising prices, they aren't stopping people from booking trips.

• 24.3 million people flew in August, "reflecting a 4% increase in U.S. domestic trips and a 3% increase in international trips compared to August 2023," per ticketing infrastructure firm Airlines Reporting Corp.

What's next: Having trouble putting an itinerary together for next year? Let AI take the wheel — 2025's version of closing your eyes and throwing a dart at a map.

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Night-sky tourism, or "noctourism," is set to be a major travel driver this coming year, Booking.com predicts.

Why it matters: The trend could bring travelers — and their dollars — to more remote locales with better night skies.

How it works: You don't have to leave the country to get a great view of the cosmos, but you typically want to get away from big cities and their light pollution.

• The U.S. is home to over 100 dark sky sanctuaries, parks and more, according to DarkSky, which calls itself "the globally recognized authority on light pollution issues and night sky conservancy."
• You can use Dark Site Finder's online map to help you plan some noctourism of your own.

Zoom in: Many of the country's best dark sky sites are out West, like Arches National Park in Utah, Big Bend National Park in Texas, and the Oregon Outback, named last year as the largest "dark sky sanctuary" in the world

• Sparsely populated, rugged and remote, the sanctuary in southeastern Oregon is comprised of some 2.5 million acres and is home to some of the best stargazing in the world.

If you go: Try downloading apps like Sky Guide, which uses your GPS coordinates to help you ID what planets and stars you're seeing in the evening sky — just keep the brightness low to avoid ruining your night vision.

• Also consider grabbing a flashlight or headlamp with red LEDs, for the same reason.

The intrigue: With the sun now in "solar maximum," it's also prime time for aurora-hunting in northern-latitude locales like Alaska, Iceland and the Nordic countries.

Yes, but: Some astronomers and stargazers are worried that the ever-increasing amount of satellites and space junk in low Earth orbit could mar our views of the night sky — perhaps forever.

The bottom line: Get your noctourism in now while the view remains spectacular.

🧐 Oregon's population of white pelicans has risen considerably in recent years, perplexing scientists as to why the species has been sticking around the Columbia River Basin for longer than expected. (OPB)

🛏️ Two overnight emergency winter shelter facilities, with 200 beds total, plan to open next week at existing Salvation Army locations, on SW 2nd Avenue and N Williams Avenue, via a city and county partnership. (KGW)

🍩 Blue Star Donuts abruptly closed two of its six Portland-area locations — on N Mississippi Avenue and in Lake Oswego — to "ensure the long-term stability" of the company, per an Instagram post. (KOIN)

💸 Portland's new mayor and city council are staring down a $27 million budget deficit, yet pending labor contracts, staffing increases and one-time program funding could make that number balloon quickly. (Willamette Week)

What initially seemed like a release of pent-up demand for air travel immediately following the worst of COVID-19 now looks like a never-ending climb.

Driving the news: Record numbers of travelers are taking to the skies this year, according to the latest TSA data.

• Nearly 3.1 million people passed through U.S. airport security checkpoints on Dec. 1 (the Sunday after Thanksgiving) — an all-time agency high.
• 2024's numbers have consistently been above those of 2023, just as 2023's figures were above those of 2022, and so on.

Zoom in: Portland International Airport's traveler traffic hasn't been immune to this trend.

• PDX is expecting a 5% bump in fiscal year 2025, which ends in June, over the previous year, according to Allison Ferre, a spokeswoman for the Port of Portland.
• The latest numbers, through mid-December, show a 5.5% increase in year-over-year growth, with a forecasted 10% jump in holiday travel, Ferre told Axios.

Between the lines: This huge demand is partly why aviation leaders like United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby have been calling for more air traffic controllers and other improvements.

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