Trends Q: Do resort guests make reservations earlier for summer or winter vacations?

A couple of weeks ago, we put numbers behind the idea that the longer a resort guest plans to stay, the further in advance they’ll make their reservation. Now, let’s take those winter numbers and compare them to summer. Do summer guests book further in advance than their winter counterparts? Take a gander.

The Goods
We used the same ten resorts for this analysis. The only difference being the use of summer lodging data versus winter.

Here’s how it looks:

While a length of stay around 3-4 is pretty similar between the two seasons, stays of 1-2 nights are booked a week further in advance in summer than in winter. From 4-nights upward it switches with bookings coming an average of 9.5 days earlier in summer than in winter.

What This Means
Without compression from school breaks, it makes sense that summer visitors don’t feel as much urgency to plan a vacation as a winter guest might. And without guests waiting for snow forecasts to make last-minute bookings, it also makes sense that 1-2 night stays in summer might average a longer lead time than in winter.

While the curve follows a similar shape with an identical peak, it’s these difference in behavior, and the reason for the behavior, that might be worth remembering as summer marketing and reservations ramp up.

But Wait, There’s More
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