last minute
The term last minute is a term used in the tourism industry and refers to trips that are not booked well in advance.
To the subject
The following definition comes from the German Travel Association (DRV):
- Last minute is a travel offer whose arrival date is within the next 14 days.
In this sense, the term is used in the German-speaking travel market.
The term originated in the 1980s when the first airlines began to offer seats from cancellations and overcapacity at short notice at discounted rates directly at the airports. Due to the great success of last-minute flights, the term was soon extended to other areas of the travel market (package tours, hotel rooms , holiday apartments ). From then on, last-minute trips became an important part of the offerings of tour operators .
In a survey of more than 1000 travelers in February 2012, a total of 67% of those questioned stated that last minute booking includes one to two weeks prior to departure.
Development of last minute travel as a tourism segment
In the meantime, last-minute flights and trips can be booked not only at airports , but also in travel agencies and on the Internet . The internet in particular has given the last minute travel market a further boost. Last-minute offers were so well received by travel customers that they had a direct impact on customers' booking behavior. The trend moved away from early bookings and towards last minute bookings.
According to a study by the web tourism market research institute, 22.2 million last-minute trips were carried out in Germany in 2015, generating sales of 9.3 billion euros (as of March 2016). The last minute travel frequency in Germany was 1.65 trips. Compared to 2014, the number of last-minute trips carried out increased by 5.4%. Due to their short-term nature, last-minute trips are always subject to greater fluctuations in demand than classic holiday trips. However, these fluctuations are less due to indifferent consumer behavior than to external factors that consumers are forced to use for orientation (public holidays, offers available at short notice, etc.). A short-term decision based on the medium-term weather forecast for the destination within the planned travel time also has an enormous influence : ten-day trends and their quick accessibility via the Internet have only existed for a few years.
Some tour operators also use the term last minute to sell trips departing within the next 6 or 12 weeks; this intensifies the competition between the organizers (subsequently also legal). Many tour operators also use the less competition-distorting term "last-minute & more", which basically means nothing more than travel offers of all kinds. Last-minute no longer automatically means cheap: even - expensive - additional trips are added to the catalog, in Meaning of an exclusive offer, and marked as last-minute .
It can currently be observed on the market that the large tour operators in particular are increasingly withdrawing from the last-minute business. They are replaced by smaller providers who specialize exclusively in the profitable " sales " with low-priced offers . Since making the travel volume in the last minute-sector long-term capacity planning difficult to calculate for the major providers of both the tour operator as the movement and lower prices for last-minute trips have fallen sharply, even a counter-trend has developed: today are increasingly early booking with Discounts and additional offers attracted, while short-term decisions lead to increased costs of the trip.
See also
The term is now also finding its way into other topics:
- Last-minute rescue in the dramaturgy
Individual evidence
- ↑ Press release on the survey by GfK at the end of February 2012 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 2.6 MB) accessed July 1, 2013
- ↑ Last-Minute-Reisen 2015. In: Study results. Web Tourism, April 11, 2016, accessed April 11, 2016 .
- ↑ Early bookers have an advantage - Free choice, many extras and low prices. (No longer available online.) In: Press information. German Travel Agency and Tour Operator Association, archived from the original on September 28, 2013 ; Retrieved February 4, 2010 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Booking a vacation early is worth twice! Decide now, save and draw on unlimited resources. (No longer available online.) In: Press information. German Travel Agency and Tour Operators Association, February 25, 2009, archived from the original on September 19, 2013 ; Retrieved February 4, 2010 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
