Hitwise reveals the most popular UK travel search terms

American and Australian internet searches for flights to the UK have increased by more than 50% over the last 12 months, according to the latest figures from Experian Hitwise.

Between August 2008 and August 2009, the volume of internet searches for a portfolio of search terms relating to searches for flights to the UK increased by 55.6% in the US and 50.4% in Australia.

"The weak pound has also had the effect of making the UK a cheaper destination for tourists from overseas,” said research director Robin Goad.

“This in turn has led to these increases in searches for flights to the UK from two of the most important markets for the UK tourism industry."

Over half of both American and Australian searches for flights to the UK during August 2009 specified London, or one of its airports, as the destination.

The second most popular destination for UK-bound flight searches from both countries was Edinburgh.

Other popular British travel related terms included ‘map of england ‘ (which was the most popular UK travel search term in the US) and ‘car hire uk’ (the most popular non-flight related UK travel search term in Australia).

During August, British Airways was the second biggest recipient of searches for UK-bound flights in the US after Cheapflights.com, while Virgin Atlantic ranked fifth.

BA was also the most popular non-domestic airline website in the US, ranking 17th in the Commercial Airlines category during August, three places ahead of Lufthansa.

Virgin Atlantic ranked 28th, while Ryanair was 47th and easyJet 68th.

"The fact that the main budget airlines serving the UK are receiving traffic from markets they don’t currently serve directly implies that people are flying into London from long haul destinations and then using the city as a base for further domestic or European flights," said Goad.

"US internet visits to Ryanair’s website have increased by 8.7% this year, while in Australia traffic to easyJet’s homepage has gone up by 50.4%."

On the ‘kangaroo route’, Malaysia Airlines received the most traffic from Australian searches for flights to the UK during August, followed by Emirates and Etihad.

Virgin ranked fifth, while BA was sixth and its codeshare partner Qantas was fourth.

Overall, Qantas is the most visited airline website in Australia, but the big Asian and Middle Eastern carriers (including Singapore Airlines, Emirates, Malaysia Airlines and Cathay Pacific) all picked up more Australian internet visits than either BA or Virgin.

By Bev Fearis