We’re already into September and another eight months of travel have flown by (sorry, not sorry). Back in April, we looked at how the crucial first three months of travel were taking shape and the overall picture that emerged was very positive. But how did the next quarter fair? Did we carry on the growth in travel? And how has this year compared to previous post covid years? It’s time to dig into some numbers.
A reminder that there are millions of search terms each month on Google and covering all of them would be impossible (if we could, we’d be Google and - we’re not!). We monitor searches across a variety of countries, continents and sectors of travel to see how things are moving and what new elements are appearing. It’s also important to note that this is just search volume and bears no link to conversion rates. The difference between looking and booking can be vast sometimes, but we do have some data on that which we hope to publish soon too.
Anyway, onto the detail…
Q2 2024 search headlines
- Total search volumes for the quarter were up 9.3% for 2024 compared to 2023
- Searches were up across each of the continents, around 10% on average, but searches to Africa and South America were flat (-1.5% and -0.1%). This follows up from a 11.2% increase across continents in 2023 as travel continues to come back strongly
- Whilst searches for country specific searches grows across the board, the types of holiday searches have grown at very uneven levels. Specialist holidays have grown 24% in this quarter with the exception of holidays to the Northern Lights up over 400% for the quarter!
- For luxury, searches for ‘luxury yacht charters’ jumped up 81% due to a big spike in April and May (perhaps linked to Monaco and other big sporting events) while other luxury searches grew at the average rate (10%)
- Skiing holidays also continued to perform very well, with a 27% increase for the quarter compared to 2023 with a very strong April helping to boost totals
- And the trend of cruise growth of the last few years carried on with a 20% increase for the quarter. The ships keep on sailing!
The winners and losers for the quarter
Whilst searches were up 10% for the quarter, searches are never spread equally. Below shows the biggest winners and losers for the second quarter of 2024 in terms of percentage changes against 2023, however it’s worth noting that these are percentages across the board, and not actuals, so small changes for lesser searched for countries will therefore have a big effect. However, for our big movers this quarter, there are some sizeable gains!
Winners
- Albania holidays – up 137%! (from 103k to 245k)
- Rwanda holidays – up 112% (looks like all that media coverage didn’t put people off…)
- Belize – up 86%
- Montenegro – up 71% (from 63k to 107k)
- Austria – up 62% (from 26k to 42k)
Losers
- Sudan – down 57%
- Vanuatu – down 52%
- Guinea – down 50%
- Tuvalu – down 46%
- Burundi – 39%
Note – all these numbers are off small numbers generally. From a popular country perspective (i.e. over 10k search per month), the biggest drop was actually the Seychelles, which saw a sizeable drop of 22%.
Where did we get to at the halfway point of the year?
Reflecting back on the first half of 2024, it's interesting to see how things have changed. As highlighted above, there have been some big changes in what travellers are after in terms of taste. It will come as no surprise that Albania tops our chart over 2024 compared to 2023. The country has seen a jump of searches by 93% so far in 2024. Why? Well, you can read all about it in our deep dive into how Albania has become a travel hot spot over the last few years.
Other big movers over the year are Rwanda and Austria (as discussed above) who both saw 60% jumps, as did Kiribati thanks to a strong start to Q1. Montenegro, Pakistan and Grenada all saw 40% jumps in 2024 against 2023, showing good gains for holiday related searches.
Of the more popular holiday locations, some of the bigger places saw some big moves too. The Far East has benefited from continued popularity due to relatively stable tourism there as well as lifting of restrictions that carried on longer than in the West. Other ‘traditional’ hot spots like Greece and Turkey have had modest growth, perhaps linked to general trends of temperatures increasing in the area.
And what about cruise?
One of the things I’ve been intrigued by for a while now is the almost non-stop growth in cruise. The last few years have set record after record with new ships being commissioned each year, more bookings than ever coming in and more promotion than ever before.
I’ve always been curious as to how this trend might continue into the future and how far out people are searching for the years ahead as a way of trying to gauge demand. Cruise bookings have traditionally been searched and booked a year or more away from the year of departure so if the cruise booking boom is to continue, seeing how many searches are done leading up to that, to me anyway, is worth keeping an eye on.
For the first half of the year, cruise searches were only just ahead of where they were in 2023:
We also saw a small increase in searches for ‘cruise holidays’ + <year of travel>, up only 4.5% which is still growth, but not at the same extent of previous years (where we saw 22% in 2023 v 2022). Whilst the general searches for cruise haven’t got to the same heights as last year, there has been a shift to searches in more niche cruise searches such as river cruises, which have increased 30% this year so far:
Summary
In terms of search volume, Q2 carried on the success of 2024 which we saw in the first quarter this year, all of this despite continued high interest rates, a change of government and continuations of wars across the globe. The interest in travel generally has been fantastic to see and I'll be interested to see how Q3 has fared as we reach ‘lates’ and peak travel periods for many ports, roads and airports across the country.
We’ll be reviewing more data in a few weeks’ time, but if you have any questions about the information presented above, then do drop me a line!
