Days-to-departure is a lagging indicator. The number that matters is committed cost per empty seat, and most operators under-count it.
What an unsold seat on a fixed departure actually costs
- Guide day-rate already committed
- Vehicle / accommodation contracted
- Marketing spent to get the click
- Opportunity cost of running the departure at a loss vs cancelling
Call it your break-even point in seats. Below that, you are paying to run the trip.
The four-way decision
Every departure inside 45 days gets one of four calls:
- Reprice. Traffic is there, conversion is soft. Cut price 10-15% and refresh the listing.
- Repromo. Traffic is low. Rewrite the listing, refresh the photos, push it to your list.
- Bundle. Offer it as an add-on to a hotter departure or as a partner cross-sell.
- Cancel and rebook. Below break-even seats with two weeks to go, cancel, offer credits, don't run at a loss.
The trap
Waiting for "one more booking" past the point where cancelling and offering a credit is cheaper than running the trip half-empty.