Luxury, honeymoon destinations top winter searches: Google India

New Delhi, Dec 27 (IANS) Holiday-related queries increased 27 per cent in 2017 winter, with most people searching for ‘luxury’, ‘honeymoon’, and ‘safari’ destinations on Google Search, the company said on Wednesday.

Seychelles, Maldives and Bali were on top of the honeymooners’ international search list this season with 40 per cent rise in these queries.

According to Google India’s top travel trends observed from September to November, both international and domestic luxury searches increased by 34 per cent and the online hunts for ‘royal holidays’ spiked 12 times as compared to the same period in 2016.

The quest for warmer topographies and related activities became widespread during winters witnessing an increase of 32 per cent in safari destination explorations.

Searches for Desert Safari in Dubai, Night Safari in Singapore, Bali Safari and Marine Park, as well as Safari World in Bangkok surged in 2017.

The search perusal for international destinations such as The Vatican grew almost eight times, followed by Myanmar (thrice) and Hungary (double).

Buzz about these locations range from “private tours of the Sistine Chapel after-hours”, “what to see at the Vatican Museum”, to “Myanmar tourism”, “Burma tourist map”, and “things to do in Budapest”.

Talking about international travel trends, Dubai still continued to be the most searched destination, followed by Bangkok, Thailand and Disneyland in the US.

Apart from the search for destination activities such as safaris, international cricket as an international excursion observed a rise of 456 per cent, fuelled by matches held at Melbourne, Australia and Lords, Britain.

Within India, Kerala topped the list of the most crowd-pleasing destination for domestic travellers.

Weekend getaways, specifically near Delhi, became an extremely popular search term, culminating a 361 per cent increase.

The trends also showed that Indians are now planning their travel in advance as last-minute bookings reduced by 17 per cent for domestic travel and 20 per cent for international trips.