It was another phenomenal 12 months overall for travel and Google search queries. Despite following two record-breaking years post-COVID, our monitored search terms saw an impressive increase in total volume, up 14.6% on 2023, which is a dazzling achievement after two very stellar years.
The need and want to travel remained strong across all demographics, with most businesses in travel seeing a solid demand, although many reported that the key driver of revenue growth came from higher average booking values rather than increased volume.
While performance varied across destinations and sectors, there were opportunities to explore and take advantage of for those businesses who were in a position to do so. Where were these opportunities and how big were they? Well, to quote a famous generative AI tool, let’s delve in!

As we can see here, general searches by continent were ahead of 2023 across the board due to the general uptick in searches for all places. Whilst some places grew faster, continents like South America and Africa grew more gradually at 2% and 8% respectively. In better news, Europe and Australasia searches both saw big increases of 20% and 30% while North America and Asia both strangely saw a 12% increase each. Whichever way you want to look at it, the vast majority of countries saw increases in the search volumes as part of the bigger trend.
Top ten movers for 2024
Some of the biggest search volume increases in 2024 were building off great years in 2023 as a number of locations continue to appeal to new markets. Search demand for Albania in 2024 didn’t quite reach the same crazy heights that we saw in 2023, but still saw near 100% increase. We’ve written a lot about why Albania has and continues to top the search travel charts. I would expect more of the same in 2025 as interest continues to build. Malta made many happy memories for me in my childhood, so it was great to see it come up high in our lists in 2024, and kudos to BA for picking them in their top 7 for 2024 (although they did put this out in May so already had some good data!).
Given the boom in cruise in recent years, it’s no surprise to see some big names cropping up in the biggest increases in search volume for the year. With more people planning to, and actually travelling with, specific cruise lines, some of these increases will benefit from both types of searchers. However, generic locations like Antarctica and Hawaii both pop up here as people are searching for cruises to new and further reaching locations.

Looking at the bottom of the charts, the story is more mixed with several UK phrases losing appeal alongside some specific locations and cruise terms. For each term listed below, I think there could be mitigating factors to consider, such as large jumps in 2023 correcting themselves a little. We're also seeing shifts from generic searches (like 'weekend breaks' or 'cruises') to more specific queries, whilst another factor could potentially be geopolitical events affecting tourism in certain countries.

Continent review
The charts below show the top country searches for each continent and the movement of each country over the last two years. The further up to the right the country is, the greater success that country has had over the last two years, with the bottom left showing significant and sustained decreases in overall volume. In the main, these tend to be countries affected by political or global events.
Africa

All searches over 50000 per year shown
Europe


Showing searches over 100,000 per year or more
North America

Searches over 20,000 per year
South America

Searches over 10,000 per year
Asia

Searches over 50,000 per year
Cruise

Searches over 600,000 per year
Holiday type and booking trends
Each year, the travel press wants to help travel businesses pick up on the latest trends. Is TikTok going to kill Google for bookings? Is Peaks dead? Will solo travel be the next big thing? I’m also for spotting trends and trying to use them to our advantage. However, realistically, things don’t change *that* much. Yes, some types of holidays are selling more than others. And yes, some age groups are more likely to book their trips in a different way to other groups, however, this has always been the way of things, it’s just the channels that change.
I’m always curious to know if there really are big changes in how people find holidays or not. I’d rather our team and our clients focused on the core things we know, rather than get distracted by some small change which is blown up because a huge percentage number is shared widely in the press.
In this section, we’ll look at how search patterns have or haven’t changed in the last few years.

Whilst this graph might look like one of your children’s lovely drawings, it does in fact contain a few interesting things within it which we’ll look at in a second. Before we do, it’s worth pointing out that some of these lines have been drawn on a secondary axis as they are very small in numbers (adventure, travel agents, luxury, specialist, 18-30s, solo) and would just be flat lines compared to the bigger categories which have huge numbers of searches. Therefore, whilst some big changes might look like big trends, they only are in that category but not huge in the overall scale of the market.
Peaks still peak in the main
That aside, the trends are largely the same throughout the last three years, with similar patterns appearing year on year. Nearly all categories ‘peak’ in January with just a few exceptions. UK holiday searches are showing an increasingly pronounced seasonal pattern now more than ever, with search volume heavily concentrated between May and the summer months.
Last summer saw prolonged searches in the key travel months which I assume is down to either waiting for better weather, last minute deals or just not knowing what budget would be available to spend. I don’t expect this trend to change this year, as all those factors are likely to remain relevant.
Cruise still on the up
Cruise has just been on an upward march for nearly three years now and shows little signs of slowing down. It does mean that there have been more peaks in the year than ever as cruisers want to travel in year but also in years ahead as their appetite continues to grow. Whether this will carry on at the mass market end will be interesting to see, given the number of niche cruises there are popping up.

One thing to caveat the above graph is that there are a lot of cruise brands in our mix and so if people are travelling more in summer months, they are likely to search for the brand they are sailing with and so driving up brand searches to slightly distort the graphs. That said, the data is the same year on year, so a big 20% jump is still quite the feat!
Solo the big riser
Solo travel searches are also on the up year on year despite the base being small. Whilst January like every other month is the biggest, we did see big jumps last summer compared to previous years. There has been a lot made of the growth of solo travel and it would appear 2025 looks to be another good year.
If we draw trend lines onto each sector over the last three years, it is actually solo travel that comes out on top with the biggest predicted increase of all so the numbers are there to back this up! All other travel sectors, if the magic formulas are to be believed, will stay roughly the same in 2025 as last year. I hope you don’t need me to say this, but looking back isn’t always the best way to look forward, so please use these graphs with several liberal pinches of salt.
With that said, there are many reasons to be positive for solo travel outside of a line drawn on a graph. Solo travel for females has been a big driver of the recent trend for a variety of reasons from more options to being available, more friendships being made on the trips, giving more reasons to repeat book as well as a lot of us realising there really is nothing us holding you back from packing your bag and heading out into the big wide world (social media will have played a big part for inspiration no doubt).

2025 predictions
Looking to the year ahead I would personally expect more of the same. I don’t really want to bow to the Excel line chart gods but I do genuinely think cruise, solo and destination lead travel will continue to dominate the searches and media headlines.
- Whilst I don’t expect cruise to be hitting the same highs of the last two years (there are just some signs of things starting to flatten out), it will be another good year.
- I think some destinations will come back into fashion, most in Europe, as cost –of-living woes (mortgage hikes for families being the biggie this year) continue to eat into mass market budgets. I would expect more ‘traditional’ places like Spanish islands, Croatia, perhaps Greece/Cyprus, Italy and then other ‘cooler’ places (both literally and trend wise) like Montenegro, Poland and Austria to continue to do well.
- Places further afield, I’m not so sure what lies in store. I can easily see cost of flights still be an issue for some and that might bring demand down for some places, but places like Thailand and Asia where general costs are still cheaper will continue to do well.
- I said at the end of last year that I thought Peaks in January 2025 would be big and it seems that is coming to pass in the main. I do then expect a steep drop off in late Feb/March only for things to pick up again in the summer with a big ‘lates’ market happening thanks to those who didn’t book earlier in the year. This is a normal pattern, but I’m expecting there to be a bigger dip in the middle with higher to come in the summer.
- Probably overall, things will be within the ballpark of recent year totals overall, but the split will be more pronounced and perhaps make a lot of operators nervous going into busy season.
Whatever happens, the team at Adido will keep on top of all the latest trends in the travel market, so check out our blog or sign up to our newsletter below to get insights sent to your inbox each month!