As evidence of the world wide web's expanding role in our lives, this holiday season will be witness to as many as 8 million travel-related web searches by India's 27 million Internet users.
Not only this, going by a reasonable conversion ratio of 0.11 percent (search to sales, i.e., number of searches to final purchase), enough searchers are likely to buy online and generate revenues to the tune of Rs 4.7 crore, according to online research outfit Webchutney.
Goa is the most coveted destination for which people are seeking information. The land of the surf and the sea occupies 25 per cent mindshare among the wired Indians affected with wanderlust around the New Year. Affirming this is the fact that Goa is twice as huge a holiday destination vis-à-vis the next nine destinations.
While Kerala features as the second destination of choice, Manali takes the third spot. Shimla, Ooty, Delhi, Corbett, Mussoorie, Mumbai and Dehradun make up the top 10. Despite the cold wave, five out of the top 10 locations are hill stations.
The top 10 holiday spots have been arrived at after a thorough analysis of 37,000 keywords centred around destinations. Over 130 keyword combinations around new year holiday, new year options, party, packages, offers etc were employed to determine the most favoured spots according to their search rankings.
An even more targeted process of testing keywords specific to locations such as Goa/Anjuna beach/packages/fenny, Kerala backwaters, Manali skiing/hills was applied to determine traveller motivations and thus their destination of choice.
Sun and sand