At one point, Lastminutetravel.com ran the risk of being one of those dot come jokes. They ran through about 50 million dollars in venture capital, ran an ad at the SuperBowl, and rented some really cool office space. They promoted themselves with the following mission statement: LastMinuteTravel.com is a global marketplace of time-sensitive, just released travel and entertainment offers. The site employs 'dynamic commerce' by scientifically merging real-time consumer demand with sophisticated revenue management systems. Both consumers and travel providers benefit from this 'd-commerce' model that powers the right offer, at the right price, to the right customer, at the right time.

They tried to make their cool d-commerce platform work.

Then they ousted their CEO and started over.

The initial business plan was kind of a travel deal directory. Travel companies would send them true last minute deals the moment they were released. These TSOs or Time Sensitive Offers would then be shown on the site to consumers eager to snap them up. The site actually didn't consummate the transaction, it would send the user to the supplier site to buy. Ultimately the business didn't scale (or really make a whole lot of sense).

The current team at LastminuteTravel.com has totally overhauled the plan and the site. They became more of a force in the ad sales world online. And then they changed the model to become a general purpose site. They built a booking engine that works with worldspan and books airline tickets. Though the inventory for the air is not really last minute travel inventory, you can buy tickets close in on this site. However, the prices are not different than other sites, and might be better on the airline sites themselves. One good reason to use lastminutetravel for airline tickets is that the site eliminated booking fees on air tickets, so you'll save at least $5 on comparable tickets at this site. The hotel inventory comes from a variety of sources and you can sometimes get a good deal on last minute hotels.

LastMinuteTravel.com still claims to offer the biggest selection of discounted travel. And the certainly have some interesting inventory that the Travelsites team did not find anywhere else.  Visitors to the site should think about subscribing to LastminuteTravel.com's TOP TEN email list. Subscribers to this free service receive advance notification each week of the site’s best bargains.

The site has a good packaging engine that uses lastminute's proprietary hotel deals to build compelling value for consumers. Lastminutetravel is especially good in Miami, New York and London, so give the site a try if you're going there. For regular last minute travel inventory, you might be best served elsewhere.

<back to where to buy online