Travel service OneTwoTrip decided to find out which cities travelers dream of visiting in the summer of 2018 and where they actually end up going on vacation. To do this, the service's analysts studied search queries for flights departing between June and August and compared them. them with actual purchases.
The most popular vacation cities this summer were: New York, Seoul, Dublin, Palma de Mallorca, Los Angeles, Toronto, Bali, Tenerife, Bangkok, Phuket, and Dubai. Users search for tickets to these destinations very frequently, but don't actually purchase them. Those flying to Simferopol, Sochi, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Anapa, Barcelona, Prague, Varna, Tivat, Tbilisi, and Paris conduct the least amount of searches before purchasing.
It's worth noting that flights to most popular cities take six hours or more, while destinations travelers buy tickets to can be reached in an average of two to three hours. This directly impacts prices: on most long-haul routes, roundtrip tickets start at 30,000 rubles or more. Meanwhile, roundtrip tickets to Sochi from other Russian cities cost an average of 15,000 rubles, and to Prague, 19,000 rubles.
"This summer, international flights have increased in price by an average of 241₽3₽ compared to last year, while domestic tickets have increased by 141₽3₽. This has influenced Russians to choose Russian resorts, neighboring countries, and traditional European destinations for their vacations. However, the fact that travelers are interested in exotic and distant destinations suggests that a significant segment of tourists in our country is now interested in unconventional travel. However, for now, they most often choose, for example, to vacation twice a year instead of taking a single trip along an exotic and expensive route," says Arkady Gines, Development Director at OneTwoTrip.
Source: trn-news.ru