Sojern Reveals World's Top Destinations

by Ryan Rudnansky
Last updated: 6:00 AM ET, Fri July 31, 2015

Travel marketing platform Sojern released its Global Travel Insights Report for the second quarter of 2015 on Thursday.

The report highlights the most popular worldwide destinations for travelers across five regions, while also noting changes in tourism to destinations over several quarters, based on search and booking behavior from major airlines, online travel agencies (OTAs), metasearch engines and more. Airline searches and bookings from more than one billion travel intent data points across the globe were analyzed.

Globally, the most searched destinations during the second quarter were: the United States, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Portugal, Turkey, Greece and Russia. Russia replaced Thailand after failing to make the list in the first quarter of 2015.

Interestingly enough, during the summer months, Americans generally preferred to stay at home. The United States was the top-searched destination for Americans in the second quarter, and the top 10 cities were all from the United States (led by Las Vegas, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco).

The destinations that experienced the greatest increase in interest since Summer 2014 (by number of searches) among North American travelers were Haiti (moving up 34 spots in the rankings) and Iceland (up 11 spots). Other destinations that saw great increases in searches were (by region): Cuba (Western European travelers), Aruba (Latin America), Bangladesh and Qatar (Southeast Asia), and Sudan (Middle East).

Cuba wasn't just popular among Western Europeans, of course. The country moved up another spot to No. 14 on the list of most popular Caribbean destinations for Americans since the first quarter. Cuba saw more searches from Americans in the second quarter than Antigua and Barbuda, Curacao, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and the British Virgin Islands.

And despite Greece's financial troubles, the country still ranks as a top-10 global destination. Travel searches dropped by 23 percent following the announcement of the referendum, but the country was already experiencing a rebound in traveler interest as of July 8, according to Sojern.

The Middle East continues to be a major region of focus, too. Following the conclusion of Ramadan, travel intent peaked in the region. From July 16 (the heaviest day of travel) to July 20, there were "consistently high travel volumes," according to Sojern. More than six in 10 travelers from the region (63 percent) looked to travel for more than eight days, and nearly 45 percent of travelers looked to traveler for 12 days or more.

For departures from July 15 through July 17, the top destinations for Middle Eastern travelers were (in order): Turkey, Egypt, India, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Spain and France.

Looking ahead, currently, the top five destinations for Americans for Labor Day Weekend are Las Vegas, Miami, Cancun, NYC and Orlando, according to the report. Nearly one-third of Americans (31 percent) plan on taking four to five days off to enjoy the holiday, and 61 percent of Americans plan on traveling solo.

To download the full report and accompanying infographic, visit www.sojern.com.