Travel comparison website, travelsupermarket.com, has monitored search trends for users researching an escape for the New Year festivities and discovered that the favourite destination for online consumers is Spain, accounting for a quarter of the flight searches. Flights to Hispanic destinations are receiving 69 per cent more searches than their nearest rival: domestic flights.

For hotels the leading destination is the UK, with of 41 per cent of the total searches. After searches for London, the top UK cities are Edinburgh (7 per cent of the total hotel searches) and Glasgow (2 per cent of hotel searches) suggesting that most online consumers are looking to celebrate Hogmanay Scottish style. Other top cities for hotel searches are Blackpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Leeds, implying that web users are looking to head north to enjoy their New Year in Britain’s ‘good-time’ cities. British hotels beat Spain into second place by 61 per cent, with France in third place with 53 per cent fewer searches than Spain.

Chris Nixon, director at travelsupermarket.com, said: “With such a high number of searches we can distinguish real travel trends. Users are looking to holiday around the UK, and to jet off to the festivities and winter warmth of Spain. Online travel consumers are seemingly looking for the best prices to party towns to see in 2007.”

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