Statistics proving the procrastinating proclivities of others are always extremely popular – especially for travel marketers looking to capitalize on the “always on” nature of the mobile device.
Enter the latest number crunch by the last-minute hotel elves at Priceline.com, who gleefully discovered that 42% of all mobile-equipped travelers waited until 5pm to book their hotel on New Year’s Eve.
 Beyond the 5pm threshold, 65% booked their rooms after 2:00 pm on the same day, and 13% waited until after 9:00 p.m. to make their reservations.
Mobile has clear implications for hotel operators, especially those looking to take advantage of the last-minute surge of bookings among mobile users.
In their most-certain-to-be-earth-shattering announcement, John Caine, Priceline’s Chief Product Officer points out that holidays are a clear time for hotels to encourage casual bookings they may not have received otherwise.
“Travel apps like Priceline can be game changers for hotels on holidays like New Year’s. It gives them that one more shot at selling last-minute rooms to mobile-equipped travelers who already may be in, or close to town, having dinner, clubbing, or watching the fireworks.”
The user data came from bookings made on the Priceline and Tonight-Only Deals app.
The New Year’s Eve study looked at which destinations pulled in the most revelers at the last minute, and where said procrastinators found the best deals.
Savings was substantial in some cities, with users enjoying an average rate cut of 53% in San Francisco, 52% in Las Vegas, 41% in Seattle and 37% in Chicago.
Here are the top last-minute New Year’s Eve destinations, according to Priceline’s statistics:
- Las Vegas Strip
- Downtown Chicago
- Houston Galleria
- Downtown San Francisco
- Downtown Boston
- Chicago’s Grant Park
- Atlanta’s Midtown/Downtown area
- Downtown Minneapolis
- Downtown Denver
- Downtown Seattle
For hotels concerned about the effect of discounting on their overall brand value, read this recent article about how a few select hotels are approaching the last-minute opportunity.
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About Nick Vivion
This is cool data. However its for a time when the decision making can be spontaneous. What I would really like to see is the stats showing the profile of mobile vs web users on a regular basis. I would also lke to see the other side of that equation from the source markets – where did people come.
In a nutshell and here is a challenge to anyone willing to report it, the data I would like to see is as follows (comparing web to mobile):
1. How late do people choose to book?
2. Where do they book last minute?
3. Where are their home locations?
4. Using LBS are they booking before leaving on a trip (IE in the general vicinity of their home) or are they already in trip?
5. How patterns vary by day of week (when sale is made)
6. How patterns vary by day of week (when they stay).
7. Booking patterns by age
8. Booking patterns by gender.
Some how we would probably need to make sure we understood those people who are booking hotels for the night in their own city – let’s say after 10PM because perhaps they got lucky
Cheers
Timothy
I’d love to see that data as well! Anyone out there willing to be (shock horror) about data that may not necessarily promote a particular agenda beyond being extremely interesting information on consumer behavior?