Madonna’s Holiday and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons are joint all time favourite pieces of music for Gatwick Express holidaymakers.A survey of their passengers has revealed the top three most popular types of holiday music to be pop 29%, then classical 28% and followed by rock at 23%.

The top two pieces were closely followed by Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven, Madonna’s Get Together and Abba’s Gold.

The next most popular genre was Jazz at 12% which was only half as popular as rock and then after that dance was the next popular with 3%. Other genres mentioned included blues, soul, reggae, country and western, urban and R&B.

When asked where they listen to music whilst on holiday the vast majority said their preference to listen to music on holiday was during the travelling elements with a massive 57% listening on the train and 17% in the car. Other travelling opportunities were also mentioned with 6% stating the plane, 2% at the airport and 1% on a boat. Interestingly the more relaxing holiday locations did not seem as popular with listening on the beach only preferred by 7%, in the hotel room by 5% and 3% by the pool.

Unsurprisingly the most common piece of kit to listen to music was MP3 players, used by 76% of the survey and in turn the ever popular I-Pod was mentioned by 42%.  After this the next most popular equipment was the radio at 12% and CD players at 8%. Lastly laptops and even cassette players got a mention.

Gareth Jones, commercial manager at Gatwick Express, adds, “Our journey time of 30 minutes gives passengers sufficient time to enjoy either a lengthy classical work or just repeat their favourite three minute pop single several times. This research was conducted to investigate the musical preferences of our passengers for possible introduction of music into our train environment. Although some of the obvious favourites were mentioned such as Cliff Richard’s Summer Holiday and the Isley Brothers Summer Breeze, we had no idea that the top choice would be split between pop and classical “
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