Your Average Guest Won’t Book More Than a Week in Advance

How far in advance does your average guest book? It’s a simple question, but it’s crucial for every hotelier to understand their guests’ booking timeline. To find out, we looked at global booking lead times from 2017 and 2018. We based our analysis on 12 million reservations from 600 hotels across the world. We found that nearly half—48%—of bookings made in 2018 were last minute, meaning they were booked within seven days of check-in. While this is a significant number, it actually represents a decrease of 6.25% when compared to the number of last minute bookings in 2017.  

Global Booking Lead Time

The number of last-minute bookings also varies by region. In Europe and North America, hotels see fewer last minute bookings than the global average, 37% and 40% respectively. The Middle East sees more last-minute bookings than the global average, at 70%. Other countries that see a majority of bookings in the week leading up to check-in include Latin America at 60%, and Asia Pacific, at 56%. In general, booking windows remained consistent year-over-year.

Only 13% of reservations were booked more than 60 days in advance. In 2018, European hotels saw the highest percentage of long-lead booking windows, at 16%, which remains unchanged from 2017. The US and Canada only saw 15% of reservations made 60+ days in advance, down 6.67% from 2017. Only 6% of 2018 bookings in the Middle East and Africa were made 60+ days in advance.

Here is the data, broken down by region:

US and Canada Booking Lead Time

Europe Booking Lead Time

APAC Booking Lead Time

Latin America Booking Lead Time

Middle East and Africa Booking Lead Time

If you’re interested in understanding your own booking windows at either the property or group level, consider Revinate Database Insights. Revinate Database Insights makes it easy to understand your guests and their needs by visualizing reservation data directly from your PMS, including nights, stays, length, lead time, and more, allowing you to easily understand trends, target the right offer to the right customer and drive revenue.