2025 Q1 Google search data analysis

• This is largely due to searches for ‘high street’ TA/OTAs where searches fell 8.7% and a lot of high street brands saw 10%+ drop or more over the quarter.
• Despite this, cruise holidays continued to grow (up 9.7%), as did luxury holidays (4.2%) and searches for specific countries (3.4%).
• For cruise specifically, river cruise brands saw 12.6% increase, just edging ocean at 7.5%.
• A shift in travel interest saw searches outside of Europe surge in North America (20.3%), Australasia (12.5%) and Asia (11.1%), contrasting with widespread drops in searches for European destinations.

It has been an interesting quarter with some places seeing some great gains while others have experienced big drops. The overall demand has weakened for the first time but as mentioned, this is largely due to bigger travel brands seeing less activity. Whether that’s as a result of more effective direct marketing strategies that bypass Google searches or a decrease in overall travel interest remains to be seen. But for most, it would appear that there is still some small growth to be had.

Top ten gainers (over 5000 searches per quarter)

Top ten droppers (over 5000 searches per quarter)

What about the Trump slump?

A 20% lift in North America searches was largely due to a significant surge in cruise interest, particularly for the Caribbean. ‘Bermuda cruises’ saw a rise of 72.8%, ‘caribbean cruises’ jumped by an impressive 88.5% and ‘panama cruises’ also experienced an uptick of 47.1%.

The picture within the USA itself is not so rosy. Searches for ‘new york holidays’ fell by 18.2%, ‘orlando holiday villas’ saw a steeper decline of 23.4%, while ‘florida holidays’ saw no change.

Good news for Canada though – ‘flights to canada’ increased 6.9% and ‘holidays to canada’ are up 47.5%, somewhat (ahem) trumping searches to the US.

Balkans are a mixed bag

Albania’s impressive rise continues, with searches up 12.4% this quarter on last, demonstrating continued growth. Results across the rest of the Balkans varies: Bosnia is up 60.4% too (although at a much smaller search volume at 8k compared to Albania’s 148k!), but Croatia is down (18%), as is Macedonia (12%). ‘Montenegro holidays’ remains unchanged YoY.

Cruise in 2025

So far, general cruise searches are substantially down across the board which would perhaps indicate that those who want to book a cruise holiday for 2025 have already done so. Worth noting that 2026 searches have also dropped off. For both ocean and river, cruise numbers are following similar 2023 trends:

Some areas of cruise are still doing well. ‘Norwegian cruises’ and ‘norwegian fjord cruises’ are up 8.5% (1.57m searches in Q1) and 22.3% (141k) respectively. ‘Japan cruise’ searches are up 141% while ‘dubai cruises’ have also increased 50% YoY too. However, searches for ‘northern lights cruises’ are down 33.2%, continuing last year’s downward trend.

These results would suggest cruisers are looking for new specific destinations and perhaps have these places in mind instead of searching for more generic terms.

Final notes

There were some unusual spikes in certain phrases this quarter, perhaps linked to shifting economic realities affecting travellers' spending capacity and destination choices this year. We spotted some massive increases in UK based travel searches with ‘campsites cornwall’ showing a 601% increase year on year and ‘weekend break london’ also up 402%.

While this shows many travellers are downsizing their trips away, at the other end of the spectrum, ‘luxury yacht charters’ increased 161% (to 43k searches) and ‘luxury villa holidays italy’ also saw a healthy 66% jump too. Our reading is that as mortgage rates start to hit some consumers, their booking choices and patterns will continue to change and it’s up to us in travel market to continue to find new locations and offerings that match our clients ever-changing needs!