US cities remain top long-haul destinations for Europeans with Dubai and Havana climbing the list

LONDON, Feb. 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Sojern, the world's leading performance marketing platform for travel brands, today released its Q4 2015 Global Travel Insights report based on the rigorous analysis of more than a billion traveller intent data points across the globe, offering a long-haul travel forecast for the year and regional trends around seasonal events such as Easter in Latin America and Lunar New Year in Asia-Pacific.

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Q4 2015 Global Travel Trends: The Bird's Eye View

The list of top eight countries that attracted the most interest in Q4 2015 overlapped with the top eight of the most booked: United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, France, Germany and Portugal. Rounding out the top 10: India and Turkey captured the imagination of travellers searching for trips in the last few months of 2015, while Switzerland and the Netherlands claimed enough bookings to gain two spots in the top ten of the most booked. Neither Thailand nor Greece made it into the top 10 last quarter - Thailand last entered the top 10 in Q3 and Greece in Q2 2015. October was by far the heaviest month for both search and bookings, capturing 37 percent and 38 percent respectively of the quarter's searches and bookings.

Travel to Paris in Aftermath of 13 November Attacks

Few things can hurt a tourist destination like a terrorist attack and the impact of the events in Paris reverberated across the globe. Travel intent to Paris from Western and Eastern Europe both dipped as low as 50 percent week-on-week in the days following the terrorist attacks on 13 November. First signs of recovery started one week thereafter, especially with French travellers, and more recovery is under way with UK travellers hitting a strong 57 percent week-on-week increase on 1 January, 2016, and US travellers displaying a 46 percent week-on-week increase in travel intent on the same date.

European Ski Season Predictions

For the 2016 ski season, Sojern examined searches conducted by European travellers to Alpine and Pyrenees airports for travel dates between December 1st and March 31st 2016 and found that, once again, it is a Spanish city - Barcelona - that ranks as Europe's favourite airport during the ski season, as it offers access to over 30 ski resorts not just in Spain, but also in France and Andorra. Munich, Geneva and Zurich follow in short order.

The Brits, the Italians and the Spaniards are some of the most avid ski travellers with the Russians in sixth position in spite of a still-sputtering economy.  Friday is the most popular departure date throughout the winter, with Saturday a close second.  

European Long-Haul Travel in 2016: Top Rising Destinations

Sojern data on outbound long-haul travel this year shows that Brazil is the destination with the biggest jump in 2016 so far, compared to 2015, for both Americans and Europeans, thanks to a boost from the Summer Olympics in Rio later in the year. Brazil climbs nine places to position 14 in the US and 12 positions to fifth place in Europe, over the entire year.

The top two destination countries for long-haul travel by European travellers remain unchanged from last year: The US followed by Thailand. Dubai rises up the list climbing from 11th to 6th position over the entire year, and Havana rises from 18th to 9th for Q1 departures.

India, Morocco and Indonesia all slide down by one position overall in 2016, the United Arab Emirates by two, and Vietnam altogether exits the top ten list of long-haul destinations for European travellers for both Q1 and 2016.

Download the full Q4 2015 Global Travel Insights report and infographic.

For more information, please visit www.sojern.com.

About Sojern

Sojern is travel's leading data-driven performance marketing engine. Through its Sojern Traveller Platform and billions of traveller intent signals across online and mobile channels, Sojern puts more heads in beds and travellers in town for its clients worldwide. Currently one of the fastest growing travel tech companies, Sojern works with top travel brands and independent hotels in North America, Latin America, Europe, MEA and APAC. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, with key offices in Dubai, London, New York, Omaha and Singapore. For more information, please visit www.sojern.com.

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