People are booking Christmas vacations earlier than ever before

What a difference a year can make. Last September, the travel industry agonized over a dearth of Christmas bookings. This September, some hotels are already fully booked for the holiday season.

People are reserving their Christmas vacations earlier this year, despite an unsettling rise in Covid-19 infections caused by the highly contagious delta variant.

The reason, said Tim White, founder of travel website Milepro.com, has everything to do with vaccines.

“As soon as … people got vaccinated — boom! — they were booking their year-end activities,” he said. White said the spring brought a “huge spike” in holiday bookings at major hotel chains like Hilton and Marriott.

Monica Buchanan Pitrelli www.cnbc.com