What's a "Thirst Trip"? Here's You Guide to the New Travel Term.

We’re typically pretty skeptical of whatever newfangled nonsense travel marketers are trotting out. After all, the industry is responsible for brain-bending hits like “bleisure,” “adventuremooning” and “mancations.” But we’re feeling surprisingly receptive to the term “thirst trips.”

Coined by Hotels.com, the buzzphrase refers to a desire for travel in the 100 days between President’s Day and Memorial Day weekend, which is the longest stretch in the national calendar without a federal holiday. As reported in a recent press release: “This 3-day weekend drought leaves people parched for a getaway.”

Parched. Hell yeah. According to Hotels.com, more Americans will grow tired of waiting “a quarter of the year” for their next vacation. Instead, the booking site predicts, “shorter, more frequent 2–3-day trips will gain popularity throughout the spring and summer.” And these thirsty, thirsty adults will specifically flock to watering holes — “There’s some irony in the fact that the longest holiday drought of the year sends us searching for relief by infinity pools, lazy rivers and swim-up bars,” cracked a woman whose name is somehow Melanie Fish.

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This is a masterclass in travel marketing and we’re very much here for it. Is Hotels.com “predicting” that a bunch of Vitamin D-deficient Americans won’t be able to make it through the dog days of winter, or is the site simply willing it into existence? And does it really matter? Thirst trips make complete sense. Why wait to take your vacation when everyone else wants to get away, anyway?

Check your shared employee calendar, if you have one. Chances are, PTO is a little less competitive to come by over the next couple of months. Ski season’s over (if it ever arrived this year), kids are in school, and the weather’s pretty mercurial until mid-May across most of the Lower 48. I don’t know if any of us are dying of thirst, but a trip over the next few weeks does sound pretty nice. Especially if you’ve been charging hard since the New Year.

InsideHook’s official stance on the matter of thirst trips: approved! We’re not so sure about “more frequent” two-to-three day trips, as Hotels.com, the thirstiest force of all in this, is clearly hoping for. At least where multiple rounds of booking and flying are concerned. (Where funds allow: what about one, well-planned long weekend somewhere warm towards the end of March? And one weekend away in late April/early May when everything’s in blossom?)

The hidden benefit to those trips — you feel less pressure to do anything for Memorial Day weekend, which is an absolutely insane time to get in a car or brave airport lines, anyway. The thirst is real, fellow travelers.