What Does BlueCruise Tell Us About Holiday Travel?

As holiday schedules get hectic and road travel gets busy, being present on your journey and relaxed when you arrive can make the whole season more enjoyable. BlueCruise hands-free highway driving can even help turn holiday drive time into opportunities for connections, especially for those long trips and stop-and-go holiday traffic. 

The highways will busy for Thanksgiving this year, with AAA projecting a record 71.7 million people will travel by car over the holiday. That’s 1.3 million more travelers on the road compared to last year. 

So, what can we learn about BlueCruise during this time? In 2023, BlueCruise usage among Ford and Lincoln owners increased 2.2 percent during Thanksgiving when traveling on highways with access to BlueCruise, compared to a non-holiday travel time period.

That may not seem like a huge increase, but what the data shows is that people are logging lots of hands-free highway miles during longer drives even though there are fewer overall trips. After all, there’s typically less commuting to work during those days when people are heading over the river and through the woods to see grandma.

Overall, in 2023, U.S. customers used BlueCruise more than 50% of the time for hour-plus drives on controlled access highways. Notably, around 77% of BlueCruise trips were under 20 minutes. That’s a lot of commutes – since the average commute time for U.S. drivers is 16-29 minutes, according to Statista Consumer Insights Global. 

In 2024, we predict we will see even more BlueCruise trips overall and during the holiday travel season, as we have expanded its availability this year to more Ford and Lincoln vehicles. And 69% of Ford owners we surveyed shared they are planning to use BlueCruise on a road trip this holiday travel season.