Americans will be splashing around this summer in the backyard pools they’ve already got, but not splashing out as much on new ones. 

Swimming pool installations were part of the home improvement frenzy that swept the country during the pandemic as Americans were stuck at home. But recent signs show demand is slowing as households with spending money shift it more toward vacations than renovations.

Pool Corp., a national pool equipment distributor with a roughly $11 billion market valuation, said last week it expects new pool construction to fall by 15% to 20% this year. Some local contractors across the country are seeing a pullback, too.

Skip Ast III, sales director at Shasta Pools in the Phoenix metropolitan area, said the local industry has been having a harder time since roughly 2022.

“If 2023 wasn’t already considered — by pool volume — kind of disastrous, this year’s been worse,” he said, but added that the company has managed to adapt.

While consumers aren’t cutting back on overall record spending, those with extra money in their budgets are increasingly burning it on experiences like travel, dining out and other service-sector purchases.

Airlines and hotels are expecting a strong travel season, cruise lines are seeing record bookings, and tickets for concerts and sporting events are still hot at sky-high prices. By contrast, nonessential household purchases are cooling off amid higher food costs and the Federal Reserve’s push to tame inflation by keeping interest rates elevated — triggering a long stretch of steep mortgage and credit card rates.

The falloff in big-ticket home purchases has been many months in the making, and pools aren’t the only backyard feature facing slower demand; Traeger Grills reported declining revenues in the first quarter, part of a trend that began early in the post-pandemic recovery. But businesses that rely on Americans’ appetite for home upgrades are still adjusting to leaner times — including pool builders.

In 2020, installations of all kinds of pools, from in-ground and hot tub pools to typically cheaper inflatable and above-ground models, rose by 20%, according to property analytics firm Cape Analytics.

At the time, “people started settling in for, ‘OK, we’re going to be at home for a while, we need to bring the vacations into our backyards,’” said Ast, whose family has been in the pool construction business for nearly 60 years. He recalled suppliers struggling to keep up with a crush of orders and contractors facing monthslong backlogs.

Scott Payne, a pool installer in Hatfield, Pennsylvania, also saw business explode during the pandemic: “As a company, we doubled revenue five of the first seven years. Two of those years were during Covid.” He described taking eight to 10 calls a day at the peak of demand.

But despite the more recent declines nationwide, Payne and Ast said their businesses are doing well, even as both have raised prices due to rising materials costs. Both said their work during the pandemic helped lay a foundation to weather this slowdown.

Responding to surging demand in an affluent area several years ago allowed Payne’s company to develop an “omnipresence” there that it’s still cashing in on, he said. While he has fewer projects in the works today, he’s doing more expensive ones, allowing his business to maintain its higher revenues.

“A lot of companies have maybe pulled back a little,” he said. “I can’t say we’re not seeing it, but we’re maybe a little isolated from it. We’re very, very busy still.”

Ast said Shasta’s own moves during the pandemic are also paying off as demand cools. It rolled out an online calculator to help potential clients estimate the costs of their projects, and it launched a new pool care division that offers maintenance services after installation. All these factors combined have allowed the company to take in a greater share of revenue from fewer consumers in the overall market, Ast said.

Even Pool Corp. pointed to a silver lining in the slowdown: After so many households recently built new pools or upgraded existing ones, there’s higher demand for upkeep services like the kind Shasta now offers.

“We are encouraged as maintenance-related product sales have remained stable, evidenced by volume growth in chemicals, and equipment sales (excluding cleaners) being down only 2% for the year, an improvement from the 3% decline realized in the first quarter of 2024,” the company said in its earnings release.

And with climate change contributing to earlier, hotter, more frequent heat waves — like those that scorched much of the country in mid-June — some consumers may be starting to see swimming pools as more of a must-have.

In Arizona, Ast said, “the lines get blurred a little bit between luxury and need in the middle of the desert.”

Record summer air travel demand isn’t translating to record U.S. airline profits. Carriers will have to answer for that disconnect when they report quarterly results this month.

Some airlines have forecast record demand, and in some cases, revenue. On Sunday, the Transportation Security Administration screened more than 3 million people, a one-day record.

But higher labor and other costs have eaten into airlines’ bottom lines. To adapt to slower demand growth and other challenges, some carriers have slowed if not halted hiring compared with hiring sprees when they rebuilt after the pandemic.

And some airlines are facing delays of new, more fuel-efficient aircraft from Airbus and Boeing at the same time that a Pratt & Whitney engine recall has grounded dozens of jets.

Yet U.S. airlines have increased capacity, flying about 6% more seats in July than they did in July 2023, according to aviation data firm OAG. The expansion is keeping airfare in check, and stocks in the sector have fallen behind the broader market.

The NYSE Arca Airline Index, which tracks 16 mostly U.S. airlines, is down almost 19% this year, while the S&P 500 has advanced more than 16%.

What the third quarter will look like for airlines is “clear as mud,” Raymond James analyst Savanthi Syth said in a note Friday, citing headwinds such as potentially weaker spending from coach-class clientele, the Paris Olympics’ impact on some Europe bookings, and possible changes in corporate travel demand.

Also, some travelers have been opting for trips in late spring and early summer, raising questions about late-summer demand.

Investors will get more insight into the traditionally slower tail end of summer and the rest of the year when airlines report quarterly results, starting with Delta Air Lines on Thursday.

Analysts consider Delta the best of the bunch, thanks in large part to the airline’s success in marketing more expensive, premium seats and its lucrative deal with American Express.

In April, Delta, the most profitable U.S. airline, forecast quarterly adjusted earnings of $2.20 to $2.50 a share for the second quarter, which would be down from the adjusted $2.68 a share it brought in a year earlier.

Delta, its rival United Airlines, which reports the following week, and Alaska Airlines are top picks for Wolfe Research airline analyst Scott Group, who said in a June 28 research note that the three have less earnings risk and better free cash flow than other carriers.

Shares of Delta and United are each up about 14% this year through July 5, the standouts in a sector that is mostly down this year. Alaska shares are down about 2%.

Airports are bustling this summer. Nearly 3 million people, setting a record, passed through U.S. airport checkpoints on June 23 alone, according to theTransportation Security Administration.

Airlines have been expanding their schedules, both domestically and internationally, pushing down fares. U.S.-Europe capacity for July is up nearly 8% from a year ago, according to consulting firm Airline/Aircraft Projects, with new routes largely targeting leisure travelers.

Fare-tracking company Hopper reported in June that summer flights between the U.S. and Europe in coach were going for $892 on average, compared with $1,065 for summer 2023.

Airfare was down nearly 6% in May from a year earlier, according to the latest U.S. inflation data.

Despite higher numbers of passengers, some carriers have admitted weaker sales than expected because of the increased flights. American Airlines on May 28 cut its second-quarter revenue and profit forecasts and announced its chief commercial officer was leaving after a sales strategy backfired.

“The domestic supply and demand imbalance has led to a weaker domestic pricing environment than we had forecast,” American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said at a Bernstein industry conference the next day. “There’s more discounting activity than we saw a year ago. Now, industry capacity is expected to come down in the second half of the year, and that should help.”

Southwest Airlines cut its second-quarter forecast in late June, citing shifting demand patterns. The Dallas-based airline is under pressure to quickly change its long-profitable business model — which has no seat assignments and one class of service — as big rivals such as United and Delta tout strong growth from premium cabins.

The airline is trying to fend off activist investor Elliott Investment Management, which disclosed a nearly $2 billion stake in the carrier in June and called for a leadership change.

“We will adapt as our customers’ needs adapt,” Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said at an industry event hosted by Politico on June 12, discussing potential new revenue initiatives.

Both American and Southwest report second-quarter results toward the end of July.

Some money-losing carriers, such as JetBlue Airways and Frontier Airlines, are already making changes.

JetBlue has been cutting unprofitable flights this year and making sure that planes outfitted with its high-end Mint business cabin, where tickets can go for more than four times a coach fare, is on the right routes.

Meanwhile Frontier Airlines and fellow discounter Spirit Airlines have done away with change fees for standard coach tickets and above, following larger, legacy carriers’ move during the pandemic. Both budget airlines announced in May that they will start offering bundled fares to include seat assignments and other add-ons that they used to charge for.

Spirit, which is struggling with the fallout from a judge’s ruling that blocked JetBlue from buying the airline, and is the most affected by the Pratt engine grounding, last week warned some 200 pilots they could be furloughed this year, according to the pilots union.

At Spirit’s annual shareholder meeting in June, CEO Ted Christie brushed off suggestions that Spirit is considering filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, with a more than $1 billion debt payment due in September 2025.

Target will soon stop accepting personal checks as a form of payment at checkout.

In a statement to NBC News, the retail giant said it was committed to creating an easy and convenient checkout experience — but that due to ‘extremely low volumes,’ it would no longer take personal checks starting July 15.

It said it has taken several measures to notify guests in advance of the move. It will still accept cash, digital wallet payments like Apple Pay, SNAP/EBT, buy now, pay later services, and credit and debit cards. 

Rival Walmart will still accept personal checks.

Target has announced several new store policies aimed at streamlining the checkout process, some of which were also aimed at curbing theft. In March, the company said it would be taking steps to limit or eliminate self-checkout options at some stores this year. Last month, Bloomberg News reported Target was allowing employees to stop thefts of $50 or more — lower than the previous $100 threshold.