The reasons people travel haven't changed much from year to year. The paths people travel before they travel have been transformed. Consumers increasingly turn to mobile to get itinerary ideas, compare flight fares, or reserve experiences. As more travelers turn to Google and YouTube to make their research for travel, Google looked across billions of searches to see travelers' digital journey to this year's hot spots.
To build a complete view of path-to-purchase trends, Google partnered with Sojern, a global performance marketing engine for travel brands, to layer on the company's booking data from 350 million anonymized traveler profiles. The result: an unprecedented look at the traveler customer journey based on intent signals across online, mobile, and video channels.
This year's emerging hot spots
In I-want-to-get-away moments, travelers turn to Search and YouTube for ideas and inspiration. As such, they're great barometers for gauging people's interest and purchase intent.
What cities are getting a groundswell of interest? Looking at the fastest-rising searches from the first half of this year, a handful of destinations rose to the top:
1. Reykjavik
2. Havana
3. Toronto
4. Mexico City
5. Tokyoftnnews
