Last minute online bookings: 52% of business travellers and 17% of leisure travellers

Top 5 European eTourism sites per country. Confirmations and surprises

In order to confirm how effective its business model is, LastMinuteTravel.com recently commissioned Penn, Shoen and Berland to conduct a survey of 1,300 American Internet users who book travel online.

The results confirm the fact that Internet sites would benefit from setting up booking methods enabling users to book flights at the last minute.

Many European eTourism sites do not allow flights to be booked less than 24, or even 72 hours (Air France), in advance. When you look at the results of LastMinuteTravel's study, it's easy to imagine the large amounts of revenue these sites are losing.

The analysis of the behaviour of online travellers often highlights, not just last minute purchasing, but also, increasingly, impulse buys.

Here are the main findings of this very interesting survey:

1. - Business travellers:

• Lastminute travel for business travellers means:
  
  
  • In the next few hours: 14%
  • In the next 24 hours: 35%
  • In the next few days: 29%
  • In the next 7 days: 9%
  • In the next 14 days:4%
    
    
• How far in advance does the business traveller makes his reservations:
  
  
  • A week or less in advance: 23%
  • A week or 2 in advance: 29%
  • 2 to 4 weeks in advance: 32%
  • 1 to 3 months in advance: 11%
    
    
• What is the main reason to make travel plans at the last minute?
  
  
  • A business emergency requires me to: 58%
  • I have some free time with no plans: 11%
  • I hear about a great trip at a great price: 14%
  • I did not have a chance to plan in advance: 14%
    
    
• How many times do you travel for business each year?
  
  
  • 1-2 trips a year: 32%
  • 3-6 trips a year: 34%
  • 6-10 trips a year: 17%
  • More than 10 trips a year: 17%
    
    
• Are you a member of an airline frequent flier program?
  
  
  • Yes: 61%
  • No: 39%
    
    
• Business travellers interviewed say that they book trips online because:
  
  
  • Can find better deals and lower prices: 47%
  • Can do it at my convenience, whenever I want: 24%
  • It is faster to find what I'm looking for: 18%
    
    
• Thoughts on "Last minute travel":
  
  
  • Travelling at the last minute/surprise getaway: 23%
  • Expensive: 24%
  • Best prices/bargain prices/paying cheap prices: 25%
    
    
• Even more interestingly, 67% of business travellers questioned said that they will start booking online next year.

2. - Leisure travellers:

• Lastminute travel for business travellers means:
  
  
  • In the next few hours: 6%
  • In the next 24 hours: 19%
  • In the next few days: 40%
  • In the next 7 days: 16%
  • In the next 14 days: 6%
  • In the next 21 days: 5%
  • Longer than in the next 21 days: 4%
    
    
• How far in advance does the business traveller makes his reservations:
  
  
  • A week or less in advance: 5%
  • A week or 2 in advance: 12%
  • 2 to 4 weeks in advance: 30%
  • 1 to 3 months in advance: 41%
  • More than 3 months in advance: 11%
    
    
• What is the main reason to make travel plans at the last minute?
  
  
  • A personnal emergency requires me to: 36%
  • I have some free time with no plans: 22%
  • I hear about a great trip at a great price: 21%
  • I did not have a chance to plan in advance: 15%
    
    
• How many times do you travel for pleasure each year?
  
  
  • 1-2 trips a year: 40%
  • 3-6 trips a year: 48%
  • 6-10 trips a year: 9%
  • More than 10 trips a year: 3%
    
    
• Are you a member of an airline frequent flier program?
  
  
  • Yes: 42%
  • No: 58%
    
    
• Leisure travellers interviewed say that they book trips online because:
  
  
  • I Can find better deals and lower prices: 53%
  • I Can do it at my convenience, whenever I want: 21%
  • It is faster to find what I'm looking for: 15%
    
    
• Thoughts on "Last minute travel":
  
  
  • Travelling at the last minute/surprise getaway: 24%
  • Expensive: 23%
  • Best prices/bargain prices/paying cheap prices: 22%
    
    
• 39% of leisure travellers interviewed say that they book trips online.
  
  
• 59% of the leisure travellers questioned said that they will start booking online next year.

PhoCusWright, the travel research company, has also studied the last minute booking niche. After interviewing 1,015 American adults by phone, they have deduced that, in the US alone, there is a pool of 25 million travellers likely to make last minute online bookings.

This statement should, however, be treated with caution, since not enough travellers were included in the study to confidently state that a quarter of the American online population is going to make last minute eTravel purchases.

In addition to this, the two studies do not tally in their analysis of purchasing behaviour.

LastMinuteTravel.com states that last minute online bookings are made by 17% of leisure travellers and 52% of business travellers, whereas PhoCusWright, which did not think it was worth separating the two categories, states that 45% of last minute bookings are made by men and 55% by women.

In the light of studies already conducted on Internet purchasing behaviour, I feel somewhat sceptical about the fact that there is such a large difference in online behaviour between men and women, in particular in favour of women.

Nonetheless, these figures add to the information found in our Internet European Travel Monitor (conducted on a representative sample of 400,000 Europeans) and underline how important the eTravel niche is.

Finally, they also show how far advanced both online business and leisure travel is in the US compared to Europe, which is still lagging a long way behind in eTourism (see our European study).

MMXI Europe, a subsidiary of Mediametrix, has just published its latest survey of the top 5 European eTourism sites (in May 2000) in France, Great Britain, Germany and Sweden.

It should be noted, however, that the survey was exclusively conducted in European households and does not include bookings made from people's work places, which means, in my opinion, that the results are somewhat biased.

Also, the survey only counted the number of visitors and does not aim at classifying the sites according to the number of bookings actually made.

This is an important point since some of the sites in the top 5 may have had a high rate of hits from visitors who were only looking for information (train times, for example) rather than wanting to actually make bookings. This, no doubt, explains why the railway sites on the whole had such excellent results.

Some of the details about the methodology used (sample per country, for example) have not been made available.

Bearing these observations in mind, here are the results. The figures correspond to the total percentage of the Internet population of each country having visited the site.