Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Sydney and Reykjavik all gain popularity with US travelers this year, while US cities remain top long-haul destinations for Europeans
SAN FRANCISCO — Sojern, the world’s leading performance marketing platform for travel brands, today released its Q4 2015 Global Travel Insights report based on the rigorous analysis of more than a billion traveler intent data points across the globe, offering a long-haul travel forecast for the year and regional trends around seasonal events such as Easter in Latin America and Lunar New Year in Asia-Pacific.
Q4 2015 Global Travel Trends: The Bird’s Eye View
The list of the top eight countries that attracted the most interest in Q4 2015 overlapped with the top eight of the most booked: United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, France, Germany and Portugal. Rounding out the top 10: India and Turkey captured the imagination of travelers searching for travel in Q4, while Switzerland and the Netherlands claimed enough bookings to gain two spots in the top ten of the most booked. Unlike in previous quarters, neither Thailand nor Greece made it into the top 10. October was by far the heaviest month for both search and bookings, capturing 37 percent and 38 percent respectively of the quarter’s searches and bookings.
Travel to Paris in Aftermath of November 13 Attacks
Few things can hurt a tourist destination like a terrorist attack and the impact of the events in Paris reverberated across the globe. Travel intent to Paris from North America dropped by as much as 33 percent week-on-week in the days immediately following the attacks, not nearly as dramatic of a decrease as intent from Western Europe, which dipped as low as 50 percent week-on-week for the same period. First signs of recovery started one week thereafter, especially with French travelers, and more recovery is under way with US travelers displaying a 46 percent week-on-week increase in travel intent on January 1 2016 and UK travelers hitting a strong 57 percent week-on-week increase on the same date.
US Ski Season Predictions
For the 2016 ski season, Sojern examined searches conducted by North American travelers (US and Canada) to ski-specific airports in the US for travel dates between February 1st and April 30th and found that, for early bookers, Vail and Jackson Hole were the top two ski destinations for both sets of snow lovers, while Steamboat Springs came in third for Americans and Aspen third for Canadians.
Four-day ski trips are the most popular with Americans, at 26 percent, followed by five-day trips (17%). US-bound Canadians take longer ski vacations: 41 percent take seven or more days to hit the slopes. The most searched dates for ski-specific travel in the upcoming months are February 11 and 12 and they revolve around Valentine’s day and Presidents’ Day weekend.
US Long-Haul Travel in 2016: Top Rising Destinations
Sojern data on outbound long-haul travel this year shows that Brazil is the destination with the biggest jump in 2016 so far, compared to 2015, for both Americans and Europeans, thanks to a boost from the Summer Olympics in Rio later in the year.
In the country rankings, Brazil climbs nine places to position 14 in the US and 12 positions to fifth place in Europe, over the entire year. Other notable destination countries include Cuba and Haiti which both climbed in ranking year-on-year, continuing a trend that started earlier in 2015. The Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Jamaica all dropped down the list of top ten destinations for US travelers in 2016, the latter by as much as four spots to position 10.
As far as city rankings go, for US travelers, Rio de Janeiro climbs 30 spots to position 28 for the entire year, but during the summer months, it moves up 58 places to position six. Other rising cities include Buenos Aires, Argentina; Sydney, Australia; and Reykjavik, Iceland.
Download the full Q4 2015 Global Travel Insights report and infographic.
For more information, please visit www.sojern.com.
