Surfing this Summer: Insights on Seasonal Travel Opportunities

The aim of our most recent research paper, ‘Surfing this Summer’, is to provide data on travel search trends to help in planning for 2009. Our methodology was simple. We looked back over last Summer and analysed travel query trends. We split the period into three sections: Pre-school Summer holidays, Summer holidays & Back to school.

Our findings are referenced against factors we believe had some effect on people's travel related behaviour. We looked at how major sporting events, public holidays, macroeconomic conditions and weather influenced people's online travel research.

The results are interesting, highlighting opportunities where advertiser exposure to online traffic could be increased. For example the adverse weather in August and September 2008 lead to high travel query volumes throughout September, possibly because people were motivated to find some late sun. As our ad depth study shows, advertisers failed to fully capitalize on these searches.

We welcome all feedback on this paper and, as ever, we hope it proves insightful. Download it here.

Posted by Jonathan Cranmer, Industry Analyst, Travel Team