Skyscanner Flight Travel Trends August 2010

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Cape Town climbs; Croatia down; Amsterdam top weekend destination according to Skyscanner.net research

With the UK summer holiday now over and a cooler, duller and wetter than average August, flights comparison site Skyscanner.net looks at the latest flight trends for last month.

Searches for Malaga and Alicante remained immensely popular, as these Spanish destinations held onto their two top positions whilst searches for flights to Tenerife rose two places to number three, overtaking both Palma and Dalaman. Ibiza rose one spot to number six, overtaking Faro, while London, New York and Amsterdam all held their top ten positions at eight, nine and ten.

Highest Climbers
Cape Town climbed 16 places, likely thanks to South Africa’s hosting of a very successful World Cup tournament which brought a huge amount of positive media coverage. Greek sun spot Rhodes rose 15 places, which will no doubt come as good news to Greece which has suffered a host of negative press coverage this summer.
Munich rose ten places as the infamous Oktoberfest draws nearer while domestically, both Manchester and Aberdeen were up ten places during August and Glasgow, Newcastle and Edinburgh saw small rises in rankings.

As thoughts turn to researching and booking winter sun holidays, flights to Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt and Tel Aviv in Israel rose 14 places, while Kuala Lumpur rose 11 spots.

Biggest Fallers
Croatia took heavy hits with its two biggest resort towns both dropping drastically in the charts; Split fell 21 spots, and Dubrovnik 20. Portugal’s Porto fell 17 spots and Spain’s Gerona fell 15.

New Entries
Only three new entries to the top 100 this month, Kos which came in at number 92, and Zante which entered at number 94 – both destinations in Greece, known for their bargain holidays. Germany’s Cologne scraped into the rankings at number 100.

Drop Outs
After a brief appearance in the Top 100, Albania’s capital Tirana disappeared from the charts this month. Poland’s Gdansk also exited the charts, and Singapore too fell out of the rankings.

10 Most Popular Country Destinations Overall
Spain remains the most searched for flight destination by UK travellers, followed by the UK itself, then the USA, which is the only country outside of Europe to make the top ten.

1. Spain
2. United Kingdom
3. United States
4. Turkey
5. Italy
6. France
7. Greece
8. Germany
9. Portugal
10. Cyprus

Most Popular Weekend Breaks
While Spain takes the top spot as the most popular searched for country overall, when it comes to weekend breaks Holland’s Amsterdam proved the most popular destination, beating Spain’s Malaga, Ibiza and Alicante which took positions two, three respectively and five. Closer to home, flights to Dublin took the fourth spot for weekend breaks.

1. Amsterdam
2. Malaga
3. Ibiza
4. Dublin
5. Alicante
6. Barcelona
7. Palma
8. London
9. Paris
10. Edinburgh

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