Companies in the country’s tourism sector must adapt to UK travellers making shorter holiday bookings closer to the date of travel or risk losing revenue, according to industry professionals.
Speaking on an episode of GlobalData’s Instant Insights podcast, James Weatherby, head of strategic data advisory for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at holiday rental analytics firm Key Data, said: “One of the biggest shifts that we’ve been tracking this year is how much later people are booking. If you look at the UK market this year, the average booking window is about a week shorter than what we saw in ‘24 and, in fact, a third of reservations in the first half of the year were made within just 14 days of arrival.
“Those last-minute bookings are typically a lower average daily rate as well, around £104. That’s been really interesting to see as a trend. We’ve also seen late booking behaviour building for the past 18 months, so this has been something that really now is a default for a large share of guests.”
Weatherby’s point was echoed by Harry Tomkinson, founder of luxury off-grid cabin rental provider Shacks, who noted: “We started taking bookings properly about three years ago within our business, and the booking window would be eight to 12 weeks, something like that, because we’re in the short stay holiday market.
“Recently, in the last 12 months or so, we’ve seen that shift quite dramatically. We’re now looking at six to eight weeks as our booking window, even leading up to the summer months. So that’s been a big change. It’s industry-wide, as well as within our business.”
Tomkinson added that 27% of bookings that came through Shacks’ website in April were made within seven days of the stays. He described that as a big shift to adapt to.
Holiday bookings slowdown
Weatherby and Tomkinson were appearing on Instant Insights following recent news of Airbnb tempering its outlook as a result of the tariffs agenda being pursued by US President Donald Trump and of subsequent cautionary messages from the likes of Booking.com, Pitchup.com, Sykes Holiday Cottages and Butlins made to the BBC.
While such geoeconomic and geopolitical concerns have been mooted as issues affecting travel bookings, with consumers understandably seeing risk within the uncertainty that they bring, Weatherby and Tomkinson both pointed to the ongoing cost-of-living squeeze as the key factor. They also pointed to bad weather in recent years as having had an impact.
“I think it’s two things,” said Tomkinson. “Number one is cost of living. It’s spare cash. Our demographic of people will be anywhere from 20 to 60, but a good chunk of that is people looking at buying their first property or renting, and it’s widely reported at how difficult that’s becoming. So, the amount of available spare cash for people is becoming less and less, and I think that’s leading to, ‘Let’s just see where we are at the end of the month, or see where we are beginning of the month, and we can make a last minute call,’ and then what they’ll do is they’ll wait for those potential late availability offers. Even during peak season, during the summer, we’re seeing that more and more and more.
“I think a second reason is actually the weather. The British love to talk about the weather, but we’ve had some very bad summers leading up to this one, and I think the lack of confidence, even though we’ve had a pretty good one this summer, is also leading to that last-minute trend where they’ll want to just be absolutely sure when they’re making that booking and spending that hard earned cash that they’re actually going to get a good experience.”
Alongside also mentioning these issues, Weatherby noted the role of online travel agencies (OTAs) in capitalising on the growing trend for late bookings.
“Platforms like Airbnb and Booking.com, they’re not just about making the late bookings possible,” he commented. “In fact, they’re promoting it. If you think about the emails you receive or the adverts that you see often talking about last-minute stays, they’re really encouraging that spontaneity and property managers, they’ll lean on those channels to fill those late gaps which they need, which means they’re going to make more supply available at the last minute. But that, in turn, reinforces that habit for the guests, so it creates this feedback loop.”
Operator adaptability
Ultimately, all of this serves to put pressure on the calendars and pricing of operators.
“When so much of that demands arriving late and a lower average rate, there’s just less room to protect those margins,” said Weatherby. “Unless they’re winning those bookings, they’re going to end up managing the revenue from really a weaker starting point. Shorter stays are another challenge there. There are more changeovers, and there are higher operational costs. They increase the risk of those gap nights I mentioned. So, if there are one- or two-day bookings, they become harder to fill. If you can’t engineer those gaps, then they’re going to leave revenue on the table.”
Both stressed the need for operators to be adaptable in responding to more frugal and considered bookings from consumers, with Tomkinson noting: “What we’ve done internally here is we’ve just made our calendar a lot more flexible. It’s not that people are not willing to spend the money. It’s just you’re having to adapt to the way in which they are now wanting to spend it.”
Of a potential return from shorter to longer lead-time bookings should household budgets ease, Weatherby added: “Ultimately, the winners are going to be those who can operate in both of those worlds.”
