A travel expert has claimed to have found the 'cheapest' time to book a holiday, right down to the minute. He also urged people to avoid a single block of time when travel becomes much more expensive.
The Cheapest and Most Expensive Times to Book
Rob Brooks, an Insider at On the Beach, claimed he has found that Brits should book their next holiday during the early hours. He said: 'I work in travel and look through holiday data every single day and I've just worked out the cheapest and most expensive times to book a holiday - I'm talking minutes and hours here.'
The travel expert, with over 138,000 TikTok followers, claimed his predictions are based on figures. He explained: 'According to the data, the most expensive time to book a holiday is between 9 and 10am in the morning. Booking in that hour came in a massive 30% more expensive than the cheapest hour of the day. So, no more booking holidays as soon as you get to the office!'
The 'best deals' are often available when nobody is looking, according to Rob. He said: 'The cheapest hour to book a holiday is early morning, like really early morning, between 4 and 5am.'
The Exact Cheapest Minute
Drilling deep into the data, Rob claimed that the official 'cheapest minute' to book was at 2:48am, with bookings at that exact moment being around '60% cheaper on average'. He added: 'Before you get excited, take that with a pinch of salt. Booking at 2:48am will not make every single holiday automatically 60% cheaper. But, the pattern is really clear, if you really want to save money on your holiday, the early hours beat the office hours every time.'
An Alternative for Non-Early Birds
As an alternative for people not keen to wake up before the sun just to save a little bit of money, there are some more reasonable hours when holidays were 'noticeably cheaper than booking in the morning rush'. Rob claimed: 'I went looking for only sociable hours and found that the best value time to book, if you're not an owl or a vampire, is in the late evening, roughly between 8 and 10pm.'
Why Are the Early Hours So Cheap?
Setting an alarm to book your holiday might not sound appealing to many people, but Rob suggested there is a logical reason this golden hour is so cheap for holidays. He said: 'I had a sneaky suspicion this would be the case because overnight airline pricing systems basically reset interest and the demand from the day before all drops off. Prices return closer to their base level. Then, as the day goes on, more searches and more clicks [means] more people just having a look and prices start to creep back up again.'
