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Viewing Last-Minute Vacations Are So Last YearLast-Minute Vacations Are So Last Year
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Where will you save the most money - last-minute vacations or those booked well in advance? Are savings the only consideration? As the travel industry changes, so do the answers. The points in this article may surprise you. By Robert Palmer Over the last decade, booking a last-minute holiday has made a lot of sense - with ever more destinations available, a flexible tourist has almost been certain of being able to grab a last-minute holiday at a bargain price. However, things are changing, and a new report suggests that for those who book next year's holiday well in advance, they are the ones who could be paying less. With holiday companies cutting back on the number of holidays they sell due to recessionary times, last-minute holiday bookings could be more expensive. The report, by a leading consumer organization, studied holiday prices for July and August this year, and compared the prices to the same holidays when they first went on sale last summer. Those holidays were on average a thousand pounds (around US $1700) higher in cost for those who had waited to book last-minute, compared to those who had booked a year in advance, changing the trend of the holiday market in Europe from the previous five years. Last-minute holidays, and the niche travel industry that has grown up around it as more people switched from brick and mortar travel agencies to booking holidays on the Internet and becoming their own travel agent, has grown as Internet usage has grown. Before the Internet was widely used, the British market, for example, traditionally saw the highest number of bookings for a summer holiday in January and February. While the first two months of the year are still high booking months, their importance has slowly declined in the last decade, as a whole section of the population took advantage of tour operators slashing prices when their flights and accommodation weren't full. With a recession, tour operators will be cutting the number of flights and available hotel rooms to popular holiday islands like Malta for 2009, making a bargain last-minute holiday even more difficult to find than in the summer of 2008. However, times change, and after the report, the equivalent of an earthquake hit the British travel industry when the country's third largest tour operator, XL, went bust in September. According to one Malta holidays travel site - and the majority of Malta's tourists originate from the UK - holidaymakers could well now not have cheap prices as their number one priority. The travel company they book with might not be in existence by the time their holiday comes around. As a result, there is a swing back to holidays booked last-minute, not because of the prices, but because the chances of a holiday company still being in business is higher. So in the fast moving travel industry, a trend away from last-minute holidays because the savings weren't there to the same extent as in previous years could be back as quickly as it went. Now other considerations factor in - such as a travel company's ability to survive a recession, and medium size travel firms could be squeezed as holidaymakers place their faith in the biggest companies, hoping that the chances of them being able to fulfill a holiday are higher. About the Author: YourMalta.com has galleries of photographs of Malta and videos. Also online are airlines that provide flights to Malta and information about Malta airport. Article source: 111 Travel Directory: Triple1.com (triple one dot com) |
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