The latest quarterly online search data from leading independent digital marketing agency, Greenlight, reveals the search term ‘last minute holidays’ accounted for almost 3% of a total of 4.4 million searches made on Google UK for holidays, in May.

The findings from the agency’s latest ‘Holidays Sector Report – Issue 17’ come on the back of news reports that travel firms have seen last-minute bookings for summer holidays drop due to the hot weather, with some tour operators saying they might be forced to discount packages if the heatwave continues for another week. Others have speculated the weather could have the same impact on the industry as that of the 2010 ash cloud.

Greenlight’s report reveals the most popular search terms consumers used when they went online to look for a holiday to domestic, short-haul and long-haul destinations and charts the most popular websites to those searches, split by queries made on computers (laptops and desktops) and mobile devices (tablets & smartphones).

According to the report, 80% (3.5 million) of holiday searches were made via computers, 20% (881, 536) on mobile devices.

‘holidays’, queried 450,000 times, was the most popular term used to look for vacations via computers and accounted for (13%) of searches.  It was followed by ‘cheap holidays’ (10%), ‘all inclusive holidays’ (3%), ‘last minute holidays’ (3%) and ‘city breaks’ (2%).

On mobile devices, the term ‘cheap holidays’ topped search queries and accounted for 15% (135,000) of holiday-related searches. ‘holidays’ followed with 7%, then ‘last minute holidays’ (4%), ‘all inclusive holidays’ (3%) and ‘weekend breaks’ (3%)

Holidays to short-haul destinations proved most popular with searches totalling 923,259. ‘Turkey holidays’ received the most number of queries both on mobile and computer searches. Other popular destinations included Malta, Croatia, Cyprus and Spain.

On the long-haul front, queries for holidays to Dubai dominated and made up close to 6% of a total of 816,166 searches.

The most visible sites for overall holiday searches in the organic* listings were travelsupermarket.co.uk, thomascook.com and thomson.co.uk, attaining a 53%, 49% and 47% share of visibility, respectively, on computers and 68%, 59% and 53% on mobile devices.

In the paid listings**, travelrepublic.co.uk, onthebeach.co.uk and holidaydiscountcentre.co.uk, were the most visible advertisers on computers, acquiring a 69%, 55% and 52% share of voice, respectively.

However, the picture was different on mobile devices, with icelolly.com, secretescapes.com and teletextholidays.co.uk taking the lead, attaining a 73%, 65% and 47% share of visibility, respectively.

Thomson ranked at the top of Greenlight’s Social Media analysis.