Data and your visitors – Booking

Particular insights that revealed by our data, Monday’s are actually a busy day. So a lot of people will not be open on a Monday, including pubs, but actually we found that was a really popular day for tours Seasonality is one, so it’s actually the opposite of what people will think. So the summer is actually a bit quieter for us. Spring and Autumn are really really our busy times and around Christmas, New year, also very busy. And booking patterns change, so those those peaks are a lot of advance bookings, the summer is a lot of last-minute bookings.

So that means that in the summer we need to have tours available for booking up until the very last minute, but in Spring and Autumn, we can afford to shut things off, if we don’t have bookings at a particular time, because there’s not as much last-minute. Where do those peaks and troughs come from? I think one that’s particular to Edinburgh is the Fringe in August. So the only people who really booked, are people who don’t know the Fringe is happening. So they they show up for the tour and they’re like why is it so busy? and you have to explain to them what the Fringe is. So that’s August in particular and I don’t think we’re alone in that.

I think there’s a lot of businesses in Edinburgh that find that, but it’s great time to take a holiday, so that’s that’s okay. And then I think it’s to do with types of travel. So Summer tends to be families, children. Spring and Autumn more groups of friends, family groups, corporates things, those things don’t happen in the Summer. So those are much more valuable bookings for us, because you get larger groups, rather than the individuals and couples booking.