A couple of weeks ago, accommodations booking giant Agoda of the Priceline Group released some fascinating travel booking trends from Asia-Pacific and beyond. The Philippines wasn’t mentioned, but they do give insights on how our neighbors have been planning their trips.
Here are my key takeaways:
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People from Hong Kong plan their trips ahead the most—seven weeks or 49.4 days ahead on the average. Next are Russia (46.4 days) and Australia (44.3 days).
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Conversely, people from Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, and India plan their trips ahead the least—16.9, 18.0, and 18.7 days on the average, respectively.
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Unsurprisingly, 99% of bookings from Singapore and Hong Kong are for abroad, since there really isn’t much domestic travel that can be done in their respective countries. United Kingdom is a far third, with 38% being domestic bookings and 62% being international.
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In the US and China, accommodations for domestic travel are booked 92% and 98% of the time, respectively.
I, for one, am surprised people plan that ahead for their travels—even 16.9 days on the average, I believe, is far long. Well, my guess is that travelers still believe that booking ahead would result great deals on accommodations, as it is the trend for buying airline tickets. Speaking from experience, that’s usually but not always the case, as last-minute hotel deals can be affordable as well.
Or maybe, people are just really more organized in planning trips than I am that they want their accommodations already settled before planning other aspects of the trip.
Anyway, I’m also surprised that China’s domestic bookings are 98% when I see many of them going abroad. Then again, Agoda is for what they call in the industry as FITs or free/frequent independent travelers, and I’m pretty sure the Chinese travel overseas mostly in tour groups.
Read the full press release from Agoda here.
