The simple reason why women are paying less for flights

A group of researchers and data analysts from Carlson Wagonlit Travel has looked at the differences in how men and women book business travel. They found that women pay an average of 2% less for their flight tickets than men. The study also concluded that there was one simple reason why this is so - women booked their flights earlier. In fact, women booked their flights on average 1.9 days earlier than men, leading to the 2% saving. This might not sound like much, but if you consider a large multi-national company and the huge number of business trips its employees must conduct each year, that 2% saving can equal a vast some of money. For companies with 1,000 business travellers, the potential saving is just over £32,000 a year. The study, which analysed 6.4 million flight bookings, also found that as traveller age increases, so does the probability that they will book their travel further in advance; between 30 and 70 years of age, advance booking increases by roughly 5 days for both genders. On the other hand, as an employee’s number of business trips each year increases, the time between booking and departure decreases. The gender gap is largest at the low frequency end (1 or 2 trips per year) and virtually disappears in the highest-frequency group, the researchers said. So, there we have it; maybe women travellers are slightly more organised than their male counterparts and, therefore, are paying less for their flights. However, when one starts to travel regularly for their work, the gender gap decreases and both sexes don’t mind leaving travel plans to the last minute. This makes sense to us at BusinessClass, who travel often and are certainly more open to spontaneous travel plans. Is this true for you? Or are you an exception?