UK consumers made 1.7 million searches online for cruise holidays in May, reveals a new independent “Cruise Sector Report – Issue 1”, published by award winning digital marketing agency, Greenlight. Seemingly, the negative publicity suffered by the sector following on from a succession of incidents – from the Costa Concordia disaster, the engine room fire on the Carnival Triumph to the Carnival Legend’s propulsion failure, has done little to deter holiday makers from considering cruise vacations.

In fact, figures released by Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), show the UK cruise industry grew 3.7% to reach almost £2.5 billion last year.  What’s more, the UK, accounted for the majority share – almost 28% of Europe’s traffic, translating to 1.7 million passengers.

Greenlight’s report reveals the most popular keywords consumers used to look for cruise holidays on Google UK. It also gives insights into those players that were most prominent to consumer searches and the size of the potential online audience. Data splits are given by computers (laptops/desktops) and mobile devices (tablets & smart phones).

According to the report, brand-related keywords accounted for the largest share of consumer searches pertaining to cruises, making up 61% of queries made via computers and 57% using mobile devices.

‘Royal caribbean’ was the most popular brand-related keyword with a total of 128,100 queries.

In terms of cruise liners, ‘independence of the seas’ dominated consumer searches made using computers (8,100) whilst ‘oasis of the seas’ was the most queried on searches made via mobile devices (2,900).

Destination-wise, ‘caribbean cruises’ ruled the waves on both computer and mobile device made searches. Combined, the term was searched for 14,000 times.

Iglucruise.com was the most visible site overall in the organic listings*. Being visible to a volume of 905,649 searches, it attained a 59% share of visibility on computers and 60% on mobile devices - visible to a volume of 127,468 searches.

In the paid listings**, virginholidaycruises.co.uk was the most prominent advertiser on laptops/desktops, with a 51% share of voice. However, cruisedeals.co.uk was the most visible advertiser on mobile devices, accounting for a 53% share of voice.

Thomson.co.uk was the most visible brand in Greenlight’s social media analysis.