It’s wet, it’s cold, and Aussies have only one thought – HOLIDAYS!
In the lead up to winter this year, a record number of Aussies panicked about the impending chill, and jumped on a travel related website, according to new stats from Nielsen.
Just over 11 million Australians visited a travel related website in May 2015, the highest unique audience ever recorded for the travel industry.
And, when it comes to who’s doing research and booking the next trip, it’s a line in the sun-soaked sand between genders – an even 50/50 male to female split.
A massive 6.6 million Australians aged over 14 plan to travel domestically in the next six months and 5.9 million are looking to head overseas in the next 12 months.
QLD is the top planned destination for domestic travel intenders (23%), while Europe tops the wish list for overseas travel intenders (29%).
Looking at how this translates into travel related online activity, close to two-thirds (63%) of those who intend to travel domestically or locally in the next 6-12 months have visited a travel website in the past month.
Airlines are star performers when it comes to dreaming about holidays, with the category growing its unique audience by an additional 664,000 people compared to May 2014.
The top three airline sites – Qantas, Virgin and Jetstar – all grew their unique audiences during this period as well, by 510,000, 121,000 and 72,000 respectively.
The hotel directories category gathered up an additional 559,000 people compared to May 2014, with Booking.com leading the pack and growing the most year-on-year with an extra 314,000 people, followed by Stayz Websites (+143,000) and Agoda (+125,000).
And the beloved travel information category also experienced some growing pains with 443,000 more people, while LuxuryEscapes was up 149,000 and Australian Business Traveller racked up an additional 121,000 people.
31% of travel intenders visited Google Maps in the past month and over 1.2 million travel intenders visited TripAdvisor.
Not surprisingly, there is a strong link between searching on both flight and accommodation websites. Close to two in five people who visited Booking.com or Wotif.com also visited the Qantas website, and 31% of Australians who visited Stayz Websites also visited Virgin Australia.
Aussies also love a frequent flyer membership program with 55% of Australians aged over 14 now part of a program.
