Hotel Giant IHG Data Shows Younger Travelers Now Prefer Much Shorter Booking Windows
Photo Credit: Travel trends this year at IHG show younger travelers are increasingly booking less than two days away from when they plan to arrive. Wikimedia / Buriable
Skift Take
Hotel booking trends have shifted to much smaller gaps between making a reservation and check-in during the pandemic. That's a forecasting headache for labor and costs, even if you are focused on the stronger drive-to travel sector like IHG.
The coronavirus pandemic continues to place a giant question mark around the travel industry and when demand will once again return to 2019 levels. Shifts in consumer behavior aren’t helping hotel companies like IHG plan for a recovery.
IHG’s new travel normal on both sides of the Atlantic include drastically shorter booking windows, according to a company report released this week. Sixty-three percent of Americans now make reservations at an IHG hotel within two days of their stay compared to 39 percent last year. Nearly 40 percent of British travelers are booking in that same two-day window compared to a little more than 20 percent last year.
With booking windows as short as these, it may seem impossible for a hotel company like IHG to anticipate future staffing needs — let alone p
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