Short-haul destinations hit by drop in holiday web searches

Web searches for holidays dropped 31% in November, with short-haul destinations taking the biggest hit.

Web searches for holidays dropped 31% in November, with short-haul destinations taking the biggest hit.

Research by digital marketing agency Greenlight found 4.4 million holiday-related searches were made on Google UK in the month against 6.4 million in August.

Demand for holidays to short-haul destinations dropped 34% from over 1.3 million queries in August to 885,000 in November.

Search volumes for domestic holidays declined by 23% in the same period.

However, long-haul holiday searches rose by 2% to almost 983,000, with the US most popular,

New York topped the top ten long-haul holiday destinations, with the term ‘New York Holidays’ accounting for 5% of queries. ‘Florida holidays’ followed (4%), then ‘Las Vegas holidays’ (3%).

Dubai, Maldives, Mexico, Caribbean, Thailand, Cuba and Egypt also featured in the long-haul holiday top ten.

Travelsupermarket.com was the most prominent site for holiday-related queries in organic listings. It was visible to more than 2.8 million searches which saw it achieve a 65% share of visibility.

Lowcostholidays.com was the most visible advertiser in paid listings, attaining a 68% share of voice.

Greenlight’s 12-month retrospective charting overall holiday search volumes in 2013 shows they were at their lowest in January, when they stood at a little over 2.5 million and peaked at 7.2 million in September.