Study reveals busiest day for holiday searches

Travel companies could be wasting money by paying to advertise on search engine Google at all the wrong times.

The latest report on the holiday sector by search marketing agency Greenlight found that the most travel-related queries on Google are on Mondays and gradually decrease towards the weekend.

Saturdays see the fewest holiday queries and Sundays have only slightly more, yet the amount travel companies spend on paid ads on Google at weekends suggests they are over-estimating how many customers are searching for holidays on Saturday and Sundays.

Greenlight tracked, recorded and analysed the behaviour of consumers online in May for its latest sector report. For the week beginning May 14, which was selected at random, by far the busiest day for holiday searches was Monday. Wednesday was the next busiest, after which searches declined until Sunday.

When Greenlight looked at the advertising behaviour of four of the largest travel companies, including First Choice, Low Cost Holidays, On The Beach, Travel Republic Thomas Cook and Thomson, it found they have similar bidding strategies for keywords on Google.

However, the majority of advertisers didn't seem to realise that Monday was the busiest day and Saturday and Sunday were much quieter.

By Linsey McNeill

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Post your comment

Your Comments

NOTE: Comments are subject to admin approval before being posted.

Travel traffic

The fact that traffic for travel related searches is higher on Mondays is no great surprise - there are an awful lot of people out there dissatisfied with work and life in general (especially with the Monday blues) so browsing for a getaway must seem appealing. And it would be more interesting to find out when the most popular day to actually book is?

By Julie Bowman, Wednesday, July 4, 2012
True but...

....paid search spend is governed by demand. So I don't agree with it being 'a waste of money' to maintain activity at weekends. If people are clicking, they are researching, no? From years of data crunching and analysis we know there really are no 'wrong times' and indeed it's critical to be visible at all times during the research stages. Slightly misleading on that point I feel. For as long as I can remember we've known about the Monday search peak, but when we plan our budget phasing we also must consider the customer's complete path to purchase, the use of multiple touch points and media, and their research cycles.

By Jo B, Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Holiday Searches Busiest day

Surprising survey results ! i would have thought Fridays would take the cake but Mondays ? Just coming in to work and start planning for the weekend holidays ?

By VENUKUMAR MAHADEVAN, Wednesday, July 4, 2012