Ever since we started looking at the most popular destinations by flight searches back in July 2010, New York has consistently been the number one place that UK Internet users want to visit. However, since the inception of the top 50 destinations list, ‘flights to australia’ has always been the single biggest flight-related search term every quarter.
That trend changed for the first time in the April quarter, with ‘flights to new york’ emerging as the top flights search term, cementing New York as the number one destination for its fourth consecutive quarter in the Travel Quarterly Review.

Dips in searches for Australian related flights have resulted in Australia’s top two destinations, Sydney and Perth, both dropping in the top 50 destinations list. Sydney was down nine places this quarter. dropping from 33rd in January 2011 to 42nd in April. Perth meanwhile dropped 15 places from 29th to 44th. The decreased demand for Australian destinations this quarter is partly attributable to increased Air Passenger Duty (APD) rates, but also to the poor exchange rate between the British pound and the Australian dollar.
New York on the other hand continues to grow as a destination that UK Internet users want to fly to. In the last year New York has gone from 4.03% of all flight-related searches to 4.64%. You can see from the chart below that the most popular time of the year for New York as a destination – including searches for flights, holidays and hotels – is in January. Interestingly, this quarter was the first time in the last year that searches for all terms relating to flights to New York overtook searches for hotels in New York, demonstrating the growing popularity of flight specific searches.

Looking at other fast moving flight searches, Greek destinations did very well with Athens, Corfu and Crete all moving up the top 50 list. UK destinations had a strong quarter in general with Edinburgh (ranked 14th overall), Belfast (18), London (19), Jersey (26), Glasgow (29) and Newquay (45) all rising in the rankings. Newquay was also the fastest moving destination of the quarter, up 55 places since January 2011.
For more insights into the top 50 destinations and a more in depth look the effect of APD and the exchange rate on Australian flight searches you can download the latest travel report for free here. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest data updates.