SiteMinder analysis reveals guests booking Australian hotels 23% earlier

Having analysed more than 100 million reservations, leading open hotel commerce platform, SiteMinder, reveals the confidence of travellers booking Australian hotels is reaching new heights post-pandemic, with booking behaviour trends from 2022 showing decreasing cancellation rates and increasing booking lead times — even with rising hotel room prices across key travel destinations.

SiteMinder’s new Hotel Booking Trends report, the only hotel commerce data analysis of more than 35,000 hotels and 450+ connected booking integrations, has revealed travellers booked their Australian hotel stays on average six days earlier and cancelled their bookings 30% less in 2022, compared to the year prior.

In 2022, analysis from SiteMinder’s Hotel Booking Trends showed:

•Travellers booking stays with Australian hotels booked further ahead than the global average. The average booking lead time was 32.8 days for Australian hotels, compared to the global average of 29.7, representing a 23% increase year-on-year from 2021.

•Cancellations of Australian hotel bookings dropped to just 17.4%, compared to a 24.8% cancellation rate in 2021.

•Booking momentum rose to 107% of 2019 levels by December 31 in 2022, despite the average daily rate (ADR) of a hotel room rising to $325 by the end of 2022, up 82% from a four-year low of $179 in May 2020.

•The most popular booking channel for travellers staying at Aussie hotels was Booking.com, with one luxury package channel making a debut. Luxury Escapes entered SiteMinder’s Top 12 most popular booking channel list for Australian hotels the first time, with Qantas Hotels remaining in the top five, highlighting the current appetite for all-inclusive package deals among those booking Australian stays.

SiteMinder’s latest research comes just days after its announcement of the 37% increase in net reservations from Chinese travellers its properties have experienced globally since mid-December, as restrictions are relaxed for the world’s largest outbound tourism market in 2019.

SiteMinder Vice President of Partnerships, James Bishop notes “the accommodation sector has remained a strong indicator of traveller confidence over the last three years, and we can see through our new Hotel Booking Trends data that this confidence is certainly starting to embed across key travel markets globally, including in Australia.

“With booking momentum increasing, the average length of stay edging longer, average daily rates rising and outbound reservations from China accelerating, global booking behaviours are displaying an increasing openness from travellers to book and spend more on accommodation and travel.”

The new data demonstrates global traveller sentiment reported in SiteMinder’s 2022 Changing Traveller Report, in which the majority of travellers surveyed reported they did not expect their travel plans to be held back by rising inflation, with 80% of Australian travellers saying they are happier when they are anticipating travel, and 76% comfortable spending additional money on extras during their next stay. In the ‘new normal’ of travel, 78% of travellers said it was important to have the flexibility to easily modify or freely cancel their reservation.

Bishop added “Hotel businesses are certainly showing an openness to employ a broader, multichannel approach as a way of connecting with more traveller segments, which reflect new expanded, multichannel traveller booking preferences and a much more competitive hotel booking landscape online.”

In Australia, the Top 12 hotel booking channels in 2022, based on total gross revenue made for all users of SiteMinder’s platform, were:

1. Booking.com

2. Expedia Group

3. Hotel websites (direct bookings)

4. Global distribution systems

5. Qantas Hotels

6. Agoda

7. AOT Group

8. Hotelbeds

9. Airbnb

10. Luxury Escapes

11. Flight Centre Travel Group

12. HRS Australasia

Click here to view all the insights from SiteMinder’s full Hotel Booking Trends report, including the Top 12 lists of top travel destinations.

Image. Rydges Sydney Harbour. Credit: Booking.com