Travel Search Trends

We are monitoring how UK search users' behaviour is changing in the face of the Coronavirus outbreak. We have used Google Trends to investigate search behaviour across various sectors.

The data in these charts is updated daily.

General Travel Trends:

Unsurprisingly demand for holidays departing from the UK has taken a massive hit as a result of the Coronavirus. We can track this using some of the highest demand general travel search terms such as 'holidays', 'cheap flights', 'hotels' where search demand started declining in the middle of February as the early spread of the virus continued and the outbreak developed quickly across Europe. and then dropped more significantly. The biggest weekly drop in Demand came in w/c 15th March as continued changes in Foreign office advice set in and school closures were announced.

Brand Demand

Demand for major holiday operators, airlines and travel advice sites shows the same trend as we see for general holiday demand. There were peaks in interest for airlines and operators such as EasyJet and Tui as travel restrictions came into place as customers looked for reassurance and information as travel plans were forced to change.

If not now, when?

The impact of current restrictions means that lots of holiday plans are changing. We expect to see a number of different behaviours including cancellations, rebookings for later in the year, but what can search interest tell us about when people might be looking to re-book?

These charts track each month + holiday search queries for the last 3 years including 2020 to identify where we are seeing changes in demand and identify variances, and eventually when demand starts to return to normal. Unsurprisingly many year on year comparisons are lower year on year but we are starting to see some changes that could indicate the times of the year that customers may be researching for now and that they may be more comfortable booking now.

In addition to looking at the remaining months of 2020, we expect many consumers to be considering their bookings for next year. Many customers are pushing their re-bookings into 2021, rather than risking the uncertaintly of re-booking for later in 2020.

As with the charts above, these charts track demand for year + holidays search queries in the last three years, including 2020 to date. We have seen lower interest for 2021 holidays since March and in line with demand for other travel related search queries but there is an indication that demand is returning in April.

Domestic Travel

France