Today we present another guest post from Richard Seymour, Experian Hitwise Client Intelligence Analyst. The data is based on the excellent research that he and Iain Congdon, another Experian Hitwise analyst in the UK, carried out for our recent Global Online Travel Update webinar.
In the UK, Travel websites rely on search engines for two fifths of their traffic. In order to understand a bit more about what us Brits are actually searching for, we recently carried out some analysis of search behaviour within the UK travel sector. During August we took the top 1,000 search terms sending traffic to websites within our Travel category, and categorized them based on the type of things people were searching for. In order to pick out any notable differences between the markets, we also carried out this analysis in the USA, Canada and Australia.

Looking at the UK data we can see that there is a fairly even spread across the categories, with Agencies Holidays the most searched for category – and more so than in the other markets. We see a large number of generic searches in this category – such as ‘holiday deals”, ‘travel agents’, ‘spa breaks’ – as consumers start their holiday research from a general base. Of all the markets, the UK also had the largest proportion of travel review sites (3%) – primarily branded searches for Tripadvisor.
Methods of transport were heavily searched for in the UK, with Flights and Train/Coach searches each accounting for 16%. However, Flights were less searched for when compared to the other regions. A quarter of searches for trains and coaches were generic, relating to train times and tickets. The UK also has the largest number of ferry searches, mostly for French destinations.
People in the UK also make the highest number of airport searches when compared with the other market, with the regional airports featuring prominently. ‘manchester airport’ was the most searched for airport term, followed by Bristol, Gatwick, Heathrow and Birmingham airports. One key variation on airport searches is for airport parking, particularly for the big airports such as Gatwick and Heathrow.
This analysis is taken from our recent Travel Webinar, but is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of data! In addition to providing equivalent analysis for the US, Australia and Canada, we also looked at: flight searches to and from the UK, the most popular destinations in each country, the top airlines and travel brands, plus the impact of social networking. You can listen to recording of the webinar for free here.
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