New Delhi : Indian travellers are escaping their mid-week blues by booking their last-minute travel plans, but at the same time they end up paying an average of 29% extra on these last minute flight searches.
According to world’s leading travel search engine, KAYAK (KAYAK.co.in), more last-minute searches are made on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 3:30 p.m. IST. This observation might suggest that most Indians are still thinking of travel during mid-day work hours. KAYAK’s data also reveal most of these searches are made through website and more than half of these searches are made by solo travellers that is 56% followed by group travellers (more than or equal to three) 25% and 19% by people travelling in pairs.
Abhijit Mishra, Director of India and Middle East, KAYAK commented, “From our data, we see that even Bangkok has the highest last-minute booking price difference of 25% among the international destinations, it is still the top searched destination of 2018. This trend may be due to waiver of visa fee for Thailand, and the rise of interest in travelling to Bangkok.
KAYAK also aims to help travellers to save on flight tickets we at KAYAK have developed helpful tools such as Price Alert and Price Forecast. These tools can help Indian travellers monitor flight prices and decide whether to ‘book now’ or ‘wait’ for a better price, such that they can plan their trips confidently and avoid costly last-minute price variances.”
Top Last Minute Searched Destinations
According to KAYAK, travellers booking last minute (bookings made within less than a week before travelling) can pay up to the highest of 42% more for travelling to Chennai, 41% more to Mumbai and 40% more Delhi. Apart from this, the all-time favourite city – Bangkok, where Indian travellers will be expecting to pay an extra 25% for last minute travel. Other top international destinations including Dubai and Singapore where travellers need to pay extra 22% and 19% respectively.
From the result, it is interesting to see that last minute domestic fares has a higher percentage difference compared to some international destinations.
| Ranking | Top Last minute destinations | Price difference to non-last-minute booking
(i.e. booking last minute is X% more expensive than 2018 average flight cost) |
Avg trip duration (days) |
| s1 | New Delhi | +40% | 4 days |
| 2 | Dubai | +22% | 6 days |
| 3 | Mumbai | +41% | 4 days |
| 4 | Bangkok | +25% | 6 days |
| 5 | Bengaluru | +38% | 4 days |
| 6 | Goa | +32% | 3 days |
| 7 | Singapore | +19% | 6 days |
| 8 | New York | +16% | 25 days |
| 9 | London | +16% | 15 days |
| 10 | Chennai | +42% | 3 days |
Top Searched Destinations in 2018:
| Ranking | Domestic destinations | International destinations |
| 1 | Goa | Bangkok |
| 2 | New Delhi | Dubai |
| 3 | Mumbai | Singapore |
| 4 | Bengaluru | New York |
| 5 | Chennai | London |
| 6 | Hyderabad | Bali |
| 7 | Kolkata | San Francisco |
| 8 | Kochi | Toronto |
| 9 | Pune | Chicago |
| 10 | Port Blair | Hong Kong |