Icelolly.com Pulse: News agenda continues to drive demand trends

Icelolly.com Pulse: News agenda continues to drive demand trends

Turkey sees spike but focus switches from summer 2021 as doubts emerge about travel restart

Yet more evidence this week about the link of travel demand to media coverage on holidays we reported by icelolly.com in its latest weekly Pulse sentiment tracker.

The holiday comparison site saw an immediate reaction to positive news related to holidays to Turkey, however, widespread uncertainty about travel this summer had an opposite impact.

With many key Europe destination countries including Greece, France and Italy experiencing a resurgence of COVID-19, there are fears this may push back the possible May 17 restart of travel.

The fragile nature of consumer confidence saw focus shift away from summer 2021 among icelolly.com users.

But an announcement from Turkey that it is preparing to welcome British visitors from May due to the success of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, saw search activity shift to its destinations.

Chris Webber, head of travel deals at icelolly.com, said: “This was another week that encapsulates quite neatly how consumer confidence and decisions are impacted by the news around travel.

“On the one hand, interest in Turkey has grown after that destination announced they’d welcome British tourists back from May.

“On the other hand comments over the weekend about the viability of getting away this summer have pushed some search focus towards 2022 travel and away from summer 2021.

“Interest in the UK remains closely aligned to school holiday periods. We’re starting to see peaks around October half term now as well as around that April 12 date.”

As areas of Turkey enjoyed the biggest weekly rise on search volume, Majorca was the biggest share loser in the top 10.

Outside the top 10, search share for Florida increased by more than a third on last week, while Amsterdam search share also saw a notable increase of around 18%.

May, June and August 2022 searches all gained share on last week. June was the only 2021 travel month in the top 10 to increase share, and that was by less than 2%.

Among domestic destinations there were notable gains for Cornwall and Dorset, but the biggest leap was for generic UK searches for which share doubled week-on-week.

Searches for England and Scotland also rose. Overall country-level search share increased 86% week-on-week.