Experian Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, today reveals that the recent heavy snow and cold weather has led to an increase in traffic to skiing and snowboarding websites. For the week ending 9th January 2010, UK Internet visits to Snow Sports websites were up 18.5% on the same week in 2009.

“The cold weather and snow across the UK may have caused travel chaos in some parts of the country, but it has also served to remind people of the pleasures of winter sports,” commented Robin Goad, Research Director for Experian Hitwise. “There has been an 18.5% increase in visits to Snow Sports websites already this year, as well as 7.0% increase in ski- and snowboard related searches.”

“While most of the people planning a snow skiing or snowboarding holiday are considering the more traditional resorts in the Alps or North America, some are looking closer to home,” continued Goad. “UK Internet searches for Scottish Ski resorts have increased faster than any other so far this year, and searches for Glenshee have already quadrupled thanks to the recent weather.”

During the week ending January 9th 2010, Glenshee was the most searched for ski resort by UK Internet users, followed by Cairngorm Searches for Cairngorm are up 60% year-on-year, while the second biggest increase in searches (after Glenshee) was for Nevis Range, also in Scotland. The rest of the top ten resort searches were all in the Alps, with Morzine the most popular overseas destination.”

Top ten most searched for ski resorts in the UK, week ending 09/01/10 (ranked by market share of searches within a portfolio of 549 ski resort related terms)