How do people in the UK use online sources to search for holidays?

Have you ever considered how YOU use online sources to search for holidays?

I know that the online media makes it easy for me to contact my cousins and uncles in America, how else online media has helps us to also factor online booking for vacations abroad in today media landscape. Looking at information related to the both the ease and speed of online booking with travel agents has presented a huge impact on me and those in the UK today.  In a surprising static of women being more likely to book holidays online than men, more research goes into the efficiency of technology in the more popular and successful brands and holidays amounting to less time organising online. The recession may feel it has been forever, but it was before 2009 that the recession hit hard for those around the UK, the main destinations for people travelling on holiday was New York, Paris, Amsterdam, London and Rome after the recession hit the rates of people going on short holidays fell to 13% of the population. So when the recession came about more people started cutting back on the short holidays for the long holidays instead. By the end of this post I will look at how holidays in UK have been affected from the growth of online sources.

The first step to establishing your target audiences is to understand the types of people who use travel. Again, looking back at the amount of women do more online booking than men, shows women that are mothers or considered the homemakers are regularly searching for summer getaways and deals in online travel websites for their kids. The fact is they are off school. We learn that more travel websites do not only recognise relationship between  genders, but in addition to age groups surrounding the women are between 35-49, show that they are the main audience booking the holidays.

The possibilities are that short holidays are of more of a bargain than long term trips, that is the reason behind the continual booking of short holiday trips. However, people between 25- 34 are frequently visiting travel websites, the reasons could be  the advantage of growing up with the knowledgeable use of technology in the 21^st century differ for those in their 50’s, that are less advanced. Find it more difficult and more comfortable consulting with a travel agent directly, an interesting statement made in another blog (http://amasmediablog.blogspot.com/) by a friend is that “they may have asked their grandchildren to do the research for them as many pensioners are not as familiar with the new age technology.”, which I agree with totally.

In a statistic of women’s favourite destination shows that is Paris, Dublin and Barcelona. In comparison, to men more favourable destinations are Dubai and Amsterdam. I have learnt people between the ages of 25-34 and 35-49, were the main groups looking at online bookings for holidays abroad. Those under the age of 24 are more likely to vacate with family members, such as, their parents or they may not as financially stable as those over 50 years old, and who are less up-to-date on modern technology. The concluding point is those between 25-34 and 35-49 the main target audience for short time breaks.

I found out that cheapflights.co.uk is the most visited online site for online booking, and not too far behind is laterooms.co.uk. The media continues to expand it the level of access through mobile phone in wireless connection to booking online on the go! Examples such as Facebook and Twitter are enable customers to become friends or follow travel agents, to be informed of the latest holiday deals on prices.  

Travel websites adopting their own social networks helps to make connections with their target audience, the more it will further expand their cliental. Whereas, Facebook allow online users to ‘like’ pages of their website. This is great for evolving their brand name and service. Providing more insight into types of holiday booking are more appeal on their websites, it made far more easier narrowing down on such information provided by the public. Cheapflights.co.uk are encouraging people to join their Facebook website and in return they will receive £50 off with their next booking this is not only because they want to get more ‘likes’ on their website but when people like pages it comes up on the ‘news feed’ which means all the contacts friends list will be able to see that they like the page, attracts other to follow in the same manner of clicking ‘like’ on their page