Newbook's first consumer study says 71% of non-retirees book travel outside business hours

Newbook has run its first consumer research study and presented the findings at its inaugural Partner Connect event. Two numbers came out of it, and one of them has a direct operational consequence.

The first: 80.4% of respondents said they plan to holiday regionally in the next 12 months. For parks, campgrounds and regional accommodation, that is the demand side holding up, which is useful reassurance but not something you can act on this week.

The second is the one to act on. 71% of people who are not retired book travel outside business hours.

Why the second number matters more

If seven in ten of your working-age guests are booking in the evening or at the weekend, then your booking path has to work with nobody watching it. Not the phone line, not the enquiry form that lands in an inbox until Monday. The actual booking engine, taking the money, confirming the site or room, applying the right rate.

The practical checks follow from that:

• Does your online booking cover every inventory type, or do the trickier ones, powered sites, cabins with pets, group bookings, still route to a phone call?
• Does a guest booking at 10pm get an immediate confirmation, or a promise that someone will be in touch?
• Are minimum stays and rate rules set correctly for the dates nobody is checking, or do they quietly block bookings over a quiet midweek?
• When payment fails at 11pm, does anything recover the booking?

Each of those is a setting rather than a purchase, which is what makes this finding worth reading. The gap between 71% of guests booking after hours and a park that still needs a staff member to confirm a reservation is not a software problem. It is a configuration problem that has been tolerated because nobody measured the cost.

The caveat

Newbook has not published the study itself. The findings were presented at Partner Connect and summarised in a company update, so there is no sample size, no fieldwork date, no methodology and no indication of which markets were surveyed. Newbook operates most heavily in Australia, New Zealand and North America, and a 71% figure could mean quite different things in each.

Treat both numbers as directional rather than quotable. The 80.4% precision in particular implies a larger sample than has been evidenced.

Also from the update

Partner Connect, Newbook's first customer event, drew around 140 customers over two days and was rated 9.2 out of 10 by attendees, with a 2027 edition planned. Newbook has also made its Operator's Practical Guide to AI available free, covering where AI helps with guest communications, reservations, reporting and admin, and where it does not.

Newbook, part of Storable, is one of the larger systems in outdoor hospitality and multi-site parks. A vendor running its own consumer research is a reasonable sign of where it thinks its product roadmap needs evidence. If the full study is published with its methodology, the booking-hours finding is the one worth revisiting.