Optimal Timing of Purchasing Decisions for Airplane Tickets and Hotels. An Example in the UK.

Customers usually like to make travel plans weeks or months ahead of the travel schedule. Therefore, they can take extra time to search information they need in order to purchase the products at the lowest possible price. Accordingly, this study bases on the revenue management (or yield management) to examine the prices of two categories, airplane tickets and hotels, over a period of eight weeks in order to observe how the prices cycle up and down over time. The aim of this study is to investigate whether there is an optimal purchasing time for any of the products. A structured observation, often also called systematic observation was conducted by this study to investigate the two categories of travel products. The study reveals that prices for the products assume an increasing trend as the date of the product consumption approaches. The implication for consumers is that they could purchase the products as early as possible to take advantage of the early prices. Although prices sometimes drop, they rarely drop lower than those the first day consumers start their search for tourism products. At end of this study, we also discuss the price variation in Taiwan and an avenue for further research.