I was just talking to a friend who works at HomeAway, and apparently he has to work on New Year’s Day because it’s the busiest booking day of the year - he says everyone plans their vacations that day. Have more experienced hosts noticed that you get lots of people making reservations on Jan 1?
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My first summer reservation for this year was made on Jan. 4. But I didn’t get another one until March. 
We’re not a mega-listing so we would hardly notice if we got one booking on Jan 1. We’re almost booked 74% for January already, and booked solid for February right now.
January 1st is just another day so I’ve no idea. In countries where people have the day off on that day then there might be more bookings than usual because people have the leisure time to do it.
As long as they book, it doesn’t matter to me when it is so I’ve never noticed.
The way I’m understanding the question is that people actually create the bookings that day because they have the time off, but the reservations are actually for later dates in the year. I assume the problem is that a host might be busy enjoying time off on Jan 1 and not be able to respond quickly enough? If I interpreted that correctly, it’s not true for me. Although I hosted a reservation on Jan 1, 2019, I did not receive any bookings on Jan 1, 2019. In fact I received my first booking on Jan 5, the same as @CeeBee
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I got some summer reservations in sept and nov. I don’t understand the logic why the people would jump on the website and make reservations on Jan 1! Unless they book national parks logement that tens to fill up quickly.
But for normal houses in cities I don’t see the point.
What happens at HomeAway isn’t relevant to me but it does make sense that holidays are busy ones for travel reservations for later in the year.
Maybe larger than average numbers of people make New Years resolutions to travel more.
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We did see an increase in people booking after the New Year last year - throughout the whole first week of January. The majority of our guests have some connection to the universities in the area and those related events are already scheduled. My theory is that people could think about something other than the Holidays now that they are over and also families were together and off-work/off-school and so could plan stuff together. Also, people get money for the Holidays and since they have just spent some time together, there is a lot of “we should make sure to do this more often”.
I notice I get most of my bookings on Sundays.
The second busiest day is Monday, when it is Sunday in the most populated parts of the world.
I’ve heard that airlines lower their prices on Tuesdays, after those two busiest days.
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People might also be getting promotional emails from the OTA’s around the beginning of the year.
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Thanks everyone. Brian_R170 interpreted the question right - apparently January 1 is when people go online to book for future dates. I was just curious if it is something others had experienced, since it seems odd to me that bookings would spike on a particular day. Sounds like it’s not a thing, at least not at the micro level.
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