Think Traverse City seems busier this weekend than is typical for mid-October?

You’re not wrong.

Fall color tourism is booming nationwide, and northern Michigan is seeing more seasonal visitors as a result. So proves data shared with The Ticker by AirDNA, a company that purports to offer “the most accurate and comprehensive vacation rental data and analytics in the world.” According to AirDNA, short-term rentals (STRs) across the northwest Lower Michigan region are projected to crack 100,000 reservation nights for this year’s fall color season – up roughly 37 percent from just four years ago.

Bram Gallagher, director of economics and forecasting for AirDNA, says the company has been tracking a significant increase in fall color tourism – or “leaf peeping,” as AirDNA calls it – since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Getting out there and doing natural outdoor recreational stuff became a huge trend when people were trying to escape infection, and that trend continues to this day,” Gallagher says. “I think right now, as people are trying to get away from screens, or as they are looking for affordable things to do, they’re finding that looking at leaves and celebrating the changing of the seasons is pretty cheap.”

Given recent economic factors, including skyrocketing inflation and high gas prices, Gallagher isn’t surprised to see 2026 leaf peeping numbers breaking records.

“We know people are looking for cheaper vacations, or are traveling closer to home,” he says.

Whatever the reason, autumn business is red hot. AirDNA reported last month that, “across 19 fall foliage markets” in the eastern and midwestern United States, nights booked for fall color season “are pacing 9.8 percent ahead of last year.” And while northern Michigan isn’t leading that charge – the biggest boom is happening in the Appalachian South, which is up 15 percent year-over-year – the numbers coming out of the 10-county northwest Lower Michigan region are nothing to sneeze at.

In 2026, Gallagher says STR reservation nights in northern Michigan saw no significant growth during the first 20 weeks of the year, and actually lost a little ground in summer compared to last year. The fall season, though, is pacing significantly ahead of 2025 – particularly for this weekend, next weekend, and the weekend after, all of which are up 10-20 percent over last year, in terms of local STR bookings.

“Our theory is that a lot of the traditional northeastern New England leaf peeping markets are essentially full, so we’re seeing demand spill over into other markets that maybe haven’t been as focused on fall color tourism in the past,” Gallagher tells The Ticker.

The increases have Gallagher projecting the 10-county northwest Lower Michigan region will exceed 100,000 STR booking nights for fall color season – a first for the region. Gallagher considers September 29 to November 8 to be the rough seasonal window for leaf peeping.

That same period saw about 73,000 reservation nights for northern Michigan STR bookings in 2022, jumped to 80,000 in 2023, then spiked again to 90,000 in 2024. Growth slowed last year, when the region tallied 92,500 STR reservations during fall color season. But it’s accelerated again this year, with a projected year-over-year uptick of about 8.5 percent.

The fall increases are happening in a year that actually saw northern Michigan slide backwards in most STR metrics. This August – the region’s peak month for vacation rental activity, per AirDNA data – there were 8,829 active STR listings across the 10-county region, down 1.8 percent from last year’s 8,990. Booking nights were also down in August, from 151,387 last year to 144,701 this year. Those decreases come on the heels of what was an almost across-the-board record-breaking year for local STRs in 2025.

Despite the year-over-year dips, Gallagher says taking a broader view of AirDNA’s data is what really shows how “intense” the STR growth has been for northern Michigan since the pre-pandemic era – particularly in the fall. In October 2019, AirDNA tracked just 5,273 STRs on the market, with 36,531 reserved nights and $7.9 million in revenue. Last October, the region was up to 8,332 STR available listings (a 58 percent increase in six years), 78,517 reservation nights (up 115 percent for the same period), and $23,575,887 in revenue (up 198 percent). This year, AirDNA is projecting 84,629 STR reservation nights across the region.

Overall, fall now accounts for 11.2 percent of STR activity in northern Michigan, compared to 46 percent for the summer season. Winter and spring have both lost ground in recent years, as fall has ticked upward.

“There’s just been a lot of extra demand in the fall, and your region has absolutely been increasing the availability of STRs into the fall season to meet that demand,” Gallagher says.