85% of Your Customers Are Desperate for a Vacation. Are You Using That?

By Caleb Nelson CEO & Founder—

There's a stat I came across recently that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.

According to Allianz Partners, 85% of U.S. travelers say they're desperate for a vacation this summer.

Desperate. That's a strong word. But if you've been paying attention to how people are feeling right now, it tracks. People are tired. They've been grinding through economic anxiety, rising costs, and the general weight of a difficult few years. The idea of getting away, of switching off, of being somewhere else for a week, feels not just appealing but necessary.

And 73% of Americans say a summer vacation is too important to skip. 63% say vacations are worth making financial sacrifices for.

Here's what I want you to sit with.

That desire is in the room every time your rep sits down with a homeowner. The person across the table from your salesperson is, in all likelihood, someone who is longing for a trip and figuring out how to make it happen.

The question is: are you using that?

The Emotional Landscape of the Sale

I've spent more than twenty years studying why people say yes to big purchases and why they don't.

What I keep coming back to is this: by the time a homeowner is sitting across from your rep, they've already done some version of the math. They know roughly what the project costs. They have a general sense of their budget. They've thought about it.

The thing that determines whether they sign that day, or walk, or stall, usually isn't information. It's emotion.

And the dominant emotion in a lot of home improvement appointments right now isn't enthusiasm. It's tension.

The tension between wanting the project done and not wanting to feel like the project came at the cost of something else they care about.

Often, that something else is a vacation.

It's not usually spoken out loud. But it's there. And a rep who walks into the room without a way to resolve that tension is fighting an invisible opponent for the entire appointment.

What "Desperate for a Vacation" Actually Means at the Kitchen Table

Let me put this in practical terms.

The homeowner who's desperate for a vacation isn't just someone who wants to sit on a beach. They're someone for whom the idea of a trip carries real emotional weight. It represents rest. It represents family time. It represents a reward for everything they've been working through.

When that person is also sitting across from your rep, evaluating a $15,000 or $20,000 project, they're quietly running a calculation.

Can we have both?

If the answer feels like no, the brakes go on. "Let me think about it." "Let's wait until next quarter." "Can you come back in the fall?"

These aren't objections about your product or your company. They're a person trying to protect something they've been looking forward to.

A complimentary Vacation Voucher doesn't just close a deal. It answers the question they were afraid to ask.

Yes. You can have both.

The Urgency Is Already in the Room

Most sales training treats urgency as something the rep has to manufacture. Create a deadline. Reference supply constraints. Make the homeowner feel like the window is closing.

That approach is less effective than it used to be, for reasons I've written about before. Today's homeowner has seen those plays and doesn't respond well to them.

But here's what's interesting. The urgency doesn't have to be manufactured right now.

It's already sitting in the room, in the form of a homeowner who's desperate for a vacation, who knows summer is coming, who's been putting off a trip for longer than they wanted to.

The rep's job isn't to create urgency. It's to tap into urgency that's already there.

Ask about travel early. "Do you have any trips planned this summer?" Let the conversation go there. Get the homeowner thinking about it. Then, at the right moment, show them they don't have to choose.

That's not a sales trick. That's a conversation that ends with a decision the homeowner feels genuinely good about.

Why This Matters More This Summer Than Last

Travel desire is always present in some form. What makes this summer different is the intensity of it.

After years of rising costs, stalled plans, and the general financial heaviness people have been carrying, the longing for a real vacation has compacted into something more acute. PwC's 2026 summer spending research found that 71% of Americans plan to spend the same or more on travel this summer compared to last year. They're not cutting travel. They're protecting it.

That means your prospects are walking into appointments with travel already on their minds. They're thinking about it. They're planning it. They're budgeting for it.

A Vacation Voucher meets them exactly there. It doesn't require your rep to plant a new idea. The idea is already planted. The voucher just becomes the thing that makes saying yes to the project and saying yes to the trip possible at the same time.

That's a powerful position to be in.

The Companies Getting This Right

Window Nation has distributed over 31,000 Vacation Vouchers since 2013. They're not doing that because it's a nice add-on. They're doing it because it changes how homeowners feel about the decision.

Jon Wayne Service Company saw average deal size increase by $1,500 after adding Vacation Vouchers. Close rates went up 10 to 15%.

Express Flooring has been running this program since 2011, with over 15,000 vouchers distributed to customers.

These companies figured out something that I believe is going to separate the market leaders from the rest of the field over the next year or two: the close isn't just about the product. It's about the full emotional experience of saying yes.

Right now, that emotional experience includes something people are desperate for.

The Opportunity in Front of You

I'm not in the habit of overselling moments. But I think what's happening right now in the market is genuinely interesting for home improvement companies willing to pay attention.

You have a massive pool of homeowners who intend to spend on their homes and are simultaneously longing for a trip. The desire is there on both sides. The question is whether your offer connects them.

The companies that figure out how to speak to both, that make the project and the trip feel like they go together rather than trade off against each other, are going to close at a level their competitors won't be able to explain.

The emotional raw material is in the room. You just have to give your reps a way to use it.

Let's Talk

If you want to see how a Vacation Voucher program works and what it could mean for your close rates this summer, I'd love to walk you through it.

We've spent over 20 years helping home improvement and home services companies turn motivated homeowners into closed deals. The opportunity right now is real.

Schedule a conversation with our team and let's talk about what this could look like for your company.