The Incredible Shrinking Booking Window
Trent Blizzard | 6 April 2009 | 4 Reviews »
One question many of our clients are asking themselves is “How will this summer turnout?”
There is a growing belief that the booking window is shortening and that more consumers than ever before will wait til the last minute to book this summer. Hotel marketers are rightfully worried about last minute bookers — they want to target this growing segment, but, are concerned about “training’ their clients wait for the last minute to book.
There is some data out about shrinking booking windows:
Tripology reports that early 2009 is up 42% from late 2008 in terms of consumer trip requests. They also note that the “booking window” has decreased steadily from August 2008 through December 2008 but increased significantly in the early part of January 2009. It started at 275 days in 2008 and recently has settled at 141 days after dipping to 117 days in December. That means the booking window is only half what it was a year ago!
Navis Technologies also has some cool data pulled from their system posted on their blog. They show a shrinking booking window… not to the same degree, but they also show January spiking back up a bit more:
Booking Window Data from Navis Technologies
I have a hunch that activities centered around finding and attracting last minute bookers could be more profitable than ever this summer.
photo credit: ricardodiaz11
April 6th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
I think thats very true. I am one of those people that wait untill the last minute.
April 6th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
This is the reality. Travelers are waiting because of great uncertainty about their jobs being there in the near term as well. We should be proactive and engage with the traveler with the pricing and value adds that they are requested. If in the end you are going to be willing to give 30% discount, why not start with that to entice earlier bookings. Let us all be part of the solution, make bookings easier, less restrictions and much fewer penalties. The conference industry should do away with attrition , require a small deposit to be applied to total bill. Better to have 100 room nights then zero. 2 page contracts, simple.
April 7th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
I’ve felt this to be true — it is very cool seeing some hard data proving my feelings to be correct. And I totally agree that it is the economy, and the personal uncertainty people are feeling, to the booking window being shorter these days.
May 11th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
We saw this to be very true especially for March stays this season. Normally we are booked full for March by the end of January. This year, we saw renters booking an entire week’s vacation for March in mid to late February. And, of course they were expecting to get a deal. We still filled up, but it was much later than last year.