Summer Holidays on Yandex Search

In spring 2011 Yandex published a small study about the most popular holiday destinations among web users. In summer, at the height of the holiday season, they make over 1.5m travel-related searches — three times the number compared with last March. Travel-related searches are the Russian queries containing Russian keywords: hotel, inn, private lodging, resort, vacation, package, tour, tourism, visa, no visa, flight, trane, plane, ticket (excluding search queries about concert or event tickets, examination tickets etc.). Other search queries were not included in the study.

Spring or summer, Turkey is the most popular country in the users’ search queries about holiday travel. As of summer 2011, people ask about Turkey three times as often as they do about the second most popular country, Bulgaria. In general, web users in summer stick to their traveling preferences and keep asking about the same countries they asked about in spring. Seven out of ten holiday destinations most
popular in March 2011 are still on the top-10 list in summer, albeit in a different order. The countries with a warmer climate, such as Thailand, Egypt or India, dropped a little in the rating.

Turkey’s popular holiday resorts generate more search interest than single countries. So, search queries with ‘Kemer’ are almost as many as search queries with ‘Italy’ and ‘Rome’ combined.

Among all search queries about traveling to Turkey, over 40% contain a city name or name of a site in a particular city. Web users are looking for information about flight tickets or package tours to a specific city, hotels and prices. Istanbul, for instance, among other things, is also a popular shopping destination with users frequently typing in the search box [шоп туры в стамбул] ‘shopping tours to Istanbul’.

Approximately half of all search queries about traveling to Turkey are about hotels. Web users are looking for [самый тусовочный отель в турции] ‘the best Turkish hotel to hang out’, [отзывы идеальный отель турция для маленьких детей] ‘reviews ideal hotel Turkey for small kids’, [самый хороший и недорогой отель турции] ‘the best and inexpensive hotel in Turkey’ and simply, [турция отели] ‘Turkey hotels’. The majority of search queries, however, are about a specific hotel or hotels in a specific city.