Last Minute Travel Survey: Most Would Consider Booking Late for Deals

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Posted Sep 27, 2016

Last-minute travel is a growing trend for consumers, according to Skift, especially when travelers can find deals on those last-minute trips. But travel isn’t always something that people can do without some planning involved. So how many consumers are actually interested in last-minute travel deals? And where do travelers go to look for those deals? We asked 1,000 respondents on September 22-26 about their thoughts on last-minute travel.

last minute travel

Travel Habits

In Ask Your Target Market’s latest survey, 16% of respondents said that they have traveled within the past month. 18% last traveled in the past three months. 12% have traveled in the past six months. 12% last travled within the past year. 8% last traveled one to two years ago. 17% haven’t traveled in more than two years. And 18% aren’t travelers at all. Hotels were named as the most popular accommodations for travelers, with 57% saying they stay in hotels regularly when they travel. And personal vehicles and airlines were most popular in terms of actual transportation. 76% said they usually travel by personal vehicle. And 35% fly regularly. Overall, 78% said they enjoy traveling. 76% said they would like to travel more. 62% said they would travel more if they could get better deals. And 64% said they would be open to traveling on short notice if they got great deals.

Last Minute Travel

When it comes to booking those travels and accommodations, just 3% said they usually make arrangements more than a year before they actually travel. 6% book more than six months prior to traveling. 17% book trips between three and six months before they travel. 27% usually book trips between one and three months before traveling. 16% usually book less than a month before traveling. 6% book less than a week before they travel. And 25% said that it varies. When making those travel decisions, 47% of travelers said that they consider cost to be their most important consideration. 40% consider the destination to be most important. 4% care most about the mode of travel. 3% want to get a good value above all else. 2% care most about convenience and the brand name of the travel companies. And 1% consider personal recommendations to be important.

Travel Deals

In general, 16% of travelers said they subscribe to multiple updates from travel brands through emails, text alerts or social media. 20% subscribe to updates from at least one travel brand. And 65% don’t subscribe to any. Expedia, Travelocity, Southwest and Marriott were the most important travel brands among those who subscribe to those updates.In addition, 3% of travelers said that they look online for travel deals daily. 6% do so a few times per week. 11% do so a few times per month. 14% look for travel deals online a few times every three months. 24% look a few times per year. 21% look less often than once a year. And 21% said they never look for travel deals online. Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, Kayak, and Trivago were some of the most popular places for people to seek out travel deals online.

Key Takeaways

Currently, it seems that many consumers tend to book their travels a few months ahead of time, rather than at the last minute. However, a majority of travelers said they would at least be open to booking trips at the last minute if they got a great deal. And price continues to be a major determining factor for a wide variety of travelers. However, not many travelers actually seek out travel deals online on a regular basis, so travel companies that want to push last-minute travel deals need to go out of their way to send them to subscribers or somehow advertise them to potential travelers who are interested in discounted trips. You can view the complete survey results in the widget below and be sure to click “Open Full Report” to take advantage of all the chart and filter options.Photo Credit: Climbing Journal Mount Rinjani package by Trekking Rinjani under CC BY 2.0What do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.

Results were collected on September 22-26 via AYTM’s online survey panel.

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