# Best Time To Book Hotels

> Independent hotel price-timing research. We track daily median hotel prices across 200+ cities, analyze how rates change with booking lead time, and publish the findings with open methodology.

Key facts about this site:

- All statistics come from our own price-observation dataset; medians are seasonality-adjusted before booking windows are compared.
- Our global booking lead-time study covers nearly 2,000 hotels and treats price differences under 5% as neutral.
- Findings describe observed historical prices, not forecasts for a specific stay.

## Research

- [How far in advance should you book a hotel?](https://www.besttimetobookhotels.com/guides/how-far-in-advance-should-you-book-a-hotel): global booking lead-time study — no universal cheapest booking day, a low observed penalty for booking 90+ days ahead, window-by-window shares, city breakdowns, methodology, and limitations.
- [The FOMO arc / boomerang rate](https://www.besttimetobookhotels.com/guides/the-fomo-arc-boomerang-rate): measured pricing pattern — hotels that raise the 90+ day price mid-window, hold it, then "discount" back to roughly the early price near check-in; frequency, timing, repeat offenders, and charted examples.

## Live data

- [Hotel prices by city](https://www.besttimetobookhotels.com/cities): daily median price calendars showing when each city is cheapest to stay.
- [Last-minute hotel deals](https://www.besttimetobookhotels.com/last-minute-deals): hotels currently priced below their typical level for near-term dates.

## Machine access

- Markdown for agents: send an `Accept: text/markdown` request header to any page URL below and that same URL returns a token-efficient Markdown version instead of HTML (browsers keep getting HTML by default). Responses set `Content-Type: text/markdown; charset=utf-8`, `Vary: Accept`, and an `X-Markdown-Tokens` estimate. Cite the normal page URL — the Markdown is the same page, not a separate resource.
- Pages that return Markdown this way:
  - https://www.besttimetobookhotels.com/ — home
  - https://www.besttimetobookhotels.com/cities — city index
  - https://www.besttimetobookhotels.com/cities/{citySlug} — daily median price table per city (e.g. https://www.besttimetobookhotels.com/cities/paris)
  - https://www.besttimetobookhotels.com/cities/{citySlug}/{hotelSlug} — per-hotel price facts: observed median and range, cheapest and most expensive dates, booking-window medians with the cheapest window, data-driven booking FAQs, and a traveler-review digest (e.g. https://www.besttimetobookhotels.com/cities/istanbul/jw-marriott-istanbul-bosphorus-istanbul)
  - https://www.besttimetobookhotels.com/last-minute-deals — last-minute deals index
  - https://www.besttimetobookhotels.com/last-minute-deals/{citySlug} — last-minute deals per city
  - https://www.besttimetobookhotels.com/guides/how-far-in-advance-should-you-book-a-hotel — the booking lead-time study, including its measured findings and methodology (English only; no /{lang} variant)
  - https://www.besttimetobookhotels.com/guides/the-fomo-arc-boomerang-rate — the FOMO-arc pricing-pattern study: measured frequency, timing, serial hotels, and example tables (English only; no /{lang} variant)
  - The home, city, hotel, and deals paths above are also available under /{lang} for: de, ru, fr, es, it, uz, tr, ar, zh, pt, id, ja, ko, th, pl, hi, nl, vi
- Direct Markdown endpoint (for discovery only, not a citation URL): https://www.besttimetobookhotels.com/agent-markdown?path=/cities renders the same Markdown for a given page path.
- API catalog (RFC 9727): https://www.besttimetobookhotels.com/.well-known/api-catalog returns `application/linkset+json` listing every machine interface below with its description, documentation, and health endpoint.
- JSON API: free, read-only, no API key, 60 requests per minute per IP per endpoint. Described by https://www.besttimetobookhotels.com/openapi.json (OpenAPI 3.1) and documented at https://www.besttimetobookhotels.com/docs/api. Endpoints: `/api/booking-advice` (when to book a city and stay), `/api/hotel-booking-lead-time` (search and read the booking lead-time study), `/api/last-minute-deal-history` (price history behind a published deal), `/api/health`.
- MCP server: https://www.besttimetobookhotels.com/mcp — hotel booking-timing tools plus graded editorial hotel reviews (get_hotel_review, find_reviewed_hotels; ~350 hotels, 19 languages), listed in the official MCP registry as com.besttimetobookhotels/booking-timing.
- Agent Skill: [hotel-booking-timing](https://skills.sh/eqiu12team/besttimetobookhotels-skills/hotel-booking-timing) — shell instructions for querying the same booking-timing data without an MCP client; install with `npx skills add https://github.com/eqiu12team/besttimetobookhotels-skills --skill hotel-booking-timing`.