Last Minute Travel

Last minute travel can be a hair-raising, teeth-gnashing, white-knuckled exercise in high-stress drama when it comes as an unexpected, unavoidable emergency. Or, it can be a really cool way to see the world at some really inexpensive rates.

If yours is an adventurous spirit fueled by an insatiable wanderlust, chances are last minute travel excites you. Thrills you, even.

Just imagine waking up on Monday morning with no clear plans for the weekend ahead. One phone call to a travel agent, though, reveals last minute travel opportunities are available for a Caribbean cruise. Or dinner in Paris. Who knew?

Airplane flights are notoriously overbooked but last minute cancellations and no-shows open up the door for last minute travel for anyone with a packed bag. If you really, really need to be somewhere and didn't have time to schedule accordingly, such as when your sister's twins arrived three weeks early, it might pay off to hang out at the airport a while, just in case.

With a looser timetable in mind, last minute travel opportunities can be found on the internet and in classified ads in your local newspaper. People make plans but sometimes last minute travel cancellations occur, such as when that happy couple that wasn't really so happy decided at last to cancel the wedding, even with the Hawaiian honeymoon reserved and ready. For somebody.

There are even networking clubs that make it their business to keep up with last minute travel opportunities that they book and market to their network of interested contacts.

Sometimes last minute plans are very expensive, such as when you absolutely, positively must be at a particular place at a particular time. But if there's a little more leeway in your life, last minute travel can be very inexpensive - and quite an adventure