Last-minute business travel costs often feel inevitable. However, if not careful, they can add up in a big way—and the costs aren’t only financial. Here’s how to reduce last-minute business travel for a more organized and efficient travel program.
Last-minute business travel is one of the most consistent budget pressures Travel Managers face. Yet, most programs treat it as inevitable. The cost goes well beyond just higher airfare, too. Missed preferred rates, reduced supplier volume commitments, Duty of Care gaps and data blind spots compound quietly over time.
Let’s investigate the last-minute business travel costs you might be overlooking. Then, we’ll consider whether or not your program’s structure is contributing to the problem. We’ll answer what policy and process changes could potentially reduce last-minute bookings in a practical, sustainable way. As a Travel Manager, making measurable cost improvements could be as simple as just addressing the issue of last-minute trips among your teams.
Key Takeaways About Last-Minute Booking Costs
- Waiting until the last minute to book airfare and hotel stays can dramatically increase travel costs. That hasn’t stopped the trend of more Travelers waiting to book their trips until a month to a week out, though.
- Last-minute business travel bookings are often a sign of another issue within the business travel policy and processes. Looking for patterns can help identify the root cause.
- By reducing last-minute bookings, Travel Managers can also reduce other issues such as lessened Duty of Care, lack of valuable booking data, etc.
The Problem
Depending on the individual travel program, a last-minute travel booking is any booking placed within 7–14 days of the departure date. Setting a specific threshold is an important part of building out a travel program and policy. Typically, the longer you wait to book travel, the more expensive.
Generally, you can see this fact more so when booking flights. For instance, one analysis found that booking within 48 hours of a flight can increase costs by nearly 300%. However, the rule applies to hotel stays as well.
Still, these proven last-minute business travel costs don’t always deter Travelers. This is the case not only in business travel but also leisure travel.
Last year, Skift reported that late bookings are becoming commonplace. Forty percent of hotel bookings in the United States in the month of June 2025 occurred within seven days of arrival. Meanwhile, the publication noted, as of last year, globally, hotel bookings made within seven days of arrival accounted for 21% of total reservations, up from 18% in 2019.
More recent reporting from HospitalityNet found that, also globally, between Q1 2023 and Q4 2025, “the share of searches made for hotels within 28 days of the date of stay [rose] by 9%…”
The publication also acknowledged a lesser but still noticeable increase for flight searches within 28 days of departure date, adding “the biggest changes in the way Travelers search for both flights and accommodation [occurred] in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and North America.”
What’s Behind It
So what’s behind this influx of last-minute bookings? It’s not purely a Traveler behavior problem, as some might expect. You cannot solely blame this on a lack of travel policy compliance. Instead, often, the causes are more so systemic, a program design problem.
A Traveler might be waiting on a trip approval, due to complicated approval workflows and that waiting delays their travel booking significantly. Companies and clients might similarly not approve meeting schedules until closer to travel date, likewise leading to delays. Additionally, the travel program may not be set up in such a way that Travelers even are aware of the cost impacts of their booking timing, with booking tools not surfacing advance purchase options clearly.
If any of these situations sound familiar, look at how your travel program’s policies may lead to an unusually high number of last-minute bookings.
Impact on Travel Programs
The most obvious impact of late travel booking is those higher last-minute business travel costs. However, the costs go far beyond merely airfare premiums, affecting your business travel spend management in greater ways.
The downstream effects can include preferred hotel rates becoming unavailable on such short notice; erosion of volume commitments that support negotiated supplier rates; Duty of Care gaps when Travelers book trips outside normal channels under time pressure; and/or data gaps created when last-minute bookings bypass the managed program.
What Travel Managers Should Understand
To reiterate, an influx in last-minute business travel isn’t a sign of unmanaged Travelers. It’s a sign that something else within your business travel policy is awry.
Maybe your approval process is too slow. Maybe your team hasn’t communicated your advance booking policy for business travel clearly. Perhaps a booking tool creates more friction than it removes.
The goal is to look closely at Traveler behavior patterns, identify where the gap is in the process, and address it. The result is fewer last-minute bookings and greater business travel cost reduction.
What to Do
Simple steps that Travel Managers can take right now to get the process started include:
- Setting and communicating advance booking windows tied to route and trip type
- Streamlining approval workflows to remove delay
- Using booking data to identify which teams or trip categories book latest
- Working with a Travel Management Company to flag last-minute booking trends before they compound
In Short…
Last-minute bookings rarely disappear entirely—the nature of business means some trips will always be urgent. The goal is to make them the exception rather than the norm, and to ensure that when they do happen, the program has guardrails in place to manage the cost and the risk. Programs that treat advance booking as a cultural expectation—supported by clear policy, the right tools and visible data—consistently outperform those that treat it as a preference.
Northstar Travel Group is a JTB Corp company. JTB Business Travel may reference reporting or research published by Northstar; however, all commentary and recommendations in this article are independently developed.
