A new survey found that 71 percent of Americans think that last minute travel plans turn out to be more expensive than a planned vacation.
Hotwire.com recently announced the results to its second annual American Travel Behavior Survey, conducted online by Harris Interactive in October 2012. Of the 2,000 adults surveyed, 71 percent believed booking a last-minute leisure trip costs more than booking one further in advance.
With the Martin Luther King Day weekend here and family planning trips, previous surveys suggested that prices of hotels and airfares are bound to go up. However, results from the survey show the contrary. According to Hotwire.com, many hotels offer their biggest discounts on those days.
The announcement suggested that large hotels in major cities like Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco adjust their prices on a daily, or sometimes hourly, basis.
"Oftentimes hotel demand doesn't always materialize as much as expected and they discount heavily on the day of check-in as a last ditch attempt to fill empty rooms," according to Breaking Travel News. "That means that travelers shopping for a room to stay in that night can score a better rate than if they booked weeks, or even days, in advance. Hotwire works with these hotels to provide these 11th hour discounts to travelers through their website, mobile site and mobile app, where 75 percent of bookings are made on the day of check-in."
"Folks visiting major metropolises are typically wary of waiting until the last minute to book a hotel because they're worried about being able to find an affordable room in a prime location," said Clem Bason, president of the Hotwire Group. "But in reality, hoteliers are dropping prices right up until the day of check in to attract last-minute bookings, with more and more coming from mobile devices. That means it's not too late to score a great deal for MLK weekend, which is right around the corner."
