The latest quarterly online search data from leading independent digital marketing agency, Greenlight, reveals the hunt term ‘last minute holidays’ accounted for just about 3% of a complete of four.4 million searches made on Google UK for holidays, in May.
The findings from the agency’s latest ‘Holidays Sector Report – Issue 17’ come at the back of stories reports that travel firms have seen last-minute bookings for summer holidays drop as a result of hot weather, with some tour operators saying they could be forced to discount packages if the heatwave continues for one more week. Others have speculated the elements can have an analogous impact at the industry as that of the 2010 ash cloud.
Greenlight’s report reveals the preferred search terms consumers used once they went online to search for a vacation to domestic, short-haul and long-haul destinations and charts the most well liked websites to these searches, split by queries made on computers (laptops and desktops) and mobile devices (tablets & smartphones).
According to the report, 80% (3.5 million) of holiday searches were made via computers, 20% (881, 536) on mobile devices.
‘holidays’, queried 450,000 times, was the hottest term used to go looking for vacations via computers and accounted for (13%) of searches. It was followed by ‘cheap holidays’ (10%), ‘all inclusive holidays’ (3%), ‘last minute holidays’ (3%) and ‘city breaks’ (2%).
On mobile devices, the term ‘cheap holidays’ topped search queries and accounted for 15% (135,000) of holiday-related searches. ‘holidays’ followed with 7%, then ‘last minute holidays’ (4%), ‘all inclusive holidays’ (3%) and ‘weekend breaks’ (3%)
Holidays to short-haul destinations proved most well-liked with searches totalling 923,259. ‘Turkey holidays’ received the foremost selection of queries both on mobile and computer searches. Other popular destinations included Malta, Croatia, Cyprus and Spain.
On the long-haul front, queries for holidays to Dubai dominated and made up virtually 6% of a complete of 816,166 searches.
The most visible sites for overall holiday searches within the organic* listings were travelsupermarket.co.uk, thomascook.com and thomson.co.uk, attaining a 53%, 49% and 47% share of visibility, respectively, on computers and 68%, 59% and 53% on mobile devices.
In the paid listings**, travelrepublic.co.uk, onthebeach.co.uk and holidaydiscountcentre.co.uk, were the foremost visible advertisers on computers, acquiring a 69%, 55% and 52% share of voice, respectively.
However, the image was different on mobile devices, with icelolly.com, secretescapes.com and teletextholidays.co.uk taking the lead, attaining a 73%, 65% and 47% share of visibility, respectively.
Thomson ranked on the top of Greenlight’s Social Media analysis.