The quest for the best cruise led travelers to their favorite search engines; US-based traffic to search sites that queried for “cruise reviews” increased 219 percent for the week ending April 15th as compared to two weeks earlier.
The warmth of spring has brought dreams of vacation cruises to the minds of lots of cubicle dwellers and people of all ages. The open seas, sunshine, dining, entertainment, and a team of people being nice to the typical person piqued the interest of web searchers to great measure during the week leading into Easter according to Hitwise.
Its research showed the share for searches of ‘discount cruises’ jumped 143 percent after several major cruise lines announced price cuts. The review site Cruise Critic reported an increase in its market share of visits by 17 percent during the week of April 15th.
Heavy competition within the cruises category tracked by Hitwise frequently saw web users going from one cruise site to another at a 26.8 percent clip. Cruise Critic’s message boards were the leading destination for travelers leaving cruise sites, Hitwise said, while many others traveled to search sites to continue their queries.
People spend a lot of time on cruise sites; Hitwise said the average session time for the week of April 15th for sites in its Travel – Cruises category marked 10 minutes and 3 seconds. Visits to the Cruise Critic message board in the same period of time more than doubled that, at 20 minutes, 44 seconds.
Of the specific cruise lines, Carnival had the most visitors with a market share of 13.15 percent for the week of the 15th. The discount cruise search site Vacations To Go topped Hitwise’s list of cruise sites by market share, with 19.05 percent of visits out of the Travel – Cruise category for that week.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
