When to book a hotel, from measured prices
The month you travel moves a hotel bill more than almost any other choice you control — and how much it moves depends heavily on the city. We price the same rooms across the next twelve months every night; this is what those measurements say, with the numbers refreshed as the data moves.
How much does the month matter?
As of Oct 2026, the widest cheapest-to-priciest-month gap among the 68 cities we track is Busan’s: a median of $80 a night in November against $277 at its peak — 71% off the peak price for the same rooms, just by moving the trip. At the other end, Sharm El Sheikh moves only 18% across its whole year ($163 to $197), so there timing buys little — go whenever suits you.
Neither number is a rule of thumb; each is this year’s measured curve for one city. The ranked table on the homepage shows where every city we track falls between those two ends.
Cheap for the city, not cheap on the map
The useful comparison is a city against its own normal, not against other cities. A $70-a-night city beats a $200 one on absolute price in every month of the year, which tells you about the cities and nothing about timing. The question timing can answer is: how far below its own usual price is this city in the month you can travel? That is how every ranking on this site is computed.
As of Oct 2026, the best-placed city inside the next 3 months by that measure is Krabi in October — a median of $46 a night, 49% below what Krabi normally costs.
If you have a month and no destination, the month pages rank every city for it. If you have a destination and no dates, its city page opens with the cheapest and most expensive months we measured.
What about booking further ahead?
We can’t tell you, and we’d rather say so than guess. We never hold the booking horizon fixed and vary the purchase date, which is the experiment that question needs, so our data measures when to go, not how far ahead to buy. Worth knowing about the figures above, too: a nearer month is necessarily quoted at a shorter horizon, so month and horizon move together in a forward curve and part of any gap between two months is the horizon rather than the season. What the curve is, exactly, is what these rooms cost today for each month. We also don’t predict prices: we can tell you what a room has cost and how much it swings, not what it will do next week.
What the nightly record does support: a specific room, on specific dates, priced below its own recorded normal — today. That is what a deal on this site is, and watching a city is how you hear about one without checking back.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page is measured rather than estimated — 13,010 properties in 107 cities, priced every week. Pick a month and we'll email you when it moves. Email only, no account, no password.
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How price history proves a discount · How we decide something is a deal