Planning a holiday? It’s potentially a bad idea to make your hotel reservations during business hours in the office, according to a new study by Rice University and Iowa State University.
Photo by Harald Groven
Studying a random sample of 4582 customers on a major online hotel reservation site, the researchers found that those who travelled further and made reservations during business hours were more likely to select higher quality hotels but were less satisfied than those people who stayed at the same hotel but travelled less, and also less satisfied people who booked during non-business hours. Researcher Ajay Kalra explains:
We speculate that occurs because people are either more fatigued at work and tend to buy more expensive items or that vacations seem more appealing while people are at work. This kind of preliminary data indicates that people should not be making purchases when they are working.
Note that the study restricts itself to hotel bookings and not your flight, but you might want to err on the side of caution and extend it to all your travel bookings.
Don’t shop for travel at work [Rice University]
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