With the recovering global economy and nearing of the summer travel season, consumers are now starting to search and plan their travels for the next three months. In an attempt to find out the top travel preferences, Yahoo!, the premier digital media company, has meticulously aggregated searches from all over APAC (includes India, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia) to reveal the most popular destinations among APAC in April. Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan are the top five summer travel destinations for APAC users based on search query and ranking frequency!
According to collated statistics from travel searches in APAC, Singapore is the most popular destination among Southeast Asian online users such as India, Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. Taiwan is the most desirable destination for online users in Singapore and Hong Kong, while Japan is also a highly popular destination for users in India and Malaysia. In addition to the top five destinations, Korea searches also resulted in a spike of 625% in Europe indicating local user’s interests compared to April 2010, while Taiwan showed interest in Thailand with 148.57% increase and SEA and India users are more willing to travel within the APAC region.
Planning for accommodation is also an important factor for travellers when planning their itinerary. From the collated hotel-related searches, online users' travel preferences in the different Asian countries were reflected very clearly. India and Southeast Asian travellers preferred more affordable and economical options, South Korean travellers like boutique hotels, while Taiwan and Hong Kong travellers prefer international hotel chains.
Prem Panicker, Managing Editor, Yahoo! India, said, "The recovery of the global economy continues, and this in turn has stimulated interest in travel. The volume of key word searches consolidated by Yahoo! APAC has increased by 121% on average, and we see this as a clear indicator that the travel sector has rebounded from its recession-driven slump."
In order to discover users' attitude towards travel planning, Yahoo! also revealed the results from its online travel survey done in Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea. The results showed that Hong Kong travellers love a good time; South Korean travellers have very different spending habits and Taiwanese travellers are the most careful planners. Yahoo! also discovered that online users prefer self-plan travel styles. More than 50% of Taiwanese and Hong Kong online users depend heavily on the Internet to search travel-related content.
