Page 38 - Decoding Decisions ~ Making sense of the messy middle
P. 38
38 CHAPTER 3 INVESTIGATING THE MESSY MIDDLE
OK Google, I want the best trip, but I want it cheap too
The story of “cheap” is largely a story about travel and tourism, even in 2020
when these categories were severely disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Of the top 10 UK search queries since 2011 including or related to “cheap”,
seven were definitively from the travel and tourism category (figure 11).
Figure 11
cheap
Top 10 searches related to the term ‘cheap’
cheap flights, flights, cheap holidays, cheap hotels, cheap
tickets, cheap holiday, cheap insurance, cheap flight, cheap
train tickets, cheap cars
Looking at “best” and “cheap” travel searches side by side, they mirror the
same pattern visible at the aggregate level (figure 12).
Figure 12
cheap best
Search term Search term
100
75
SEARCH INTEREST 50
25
0
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
Travel category searches in the UK more often contain “cheap” than “best” but these trends have been converging.
Data source: Google Trends, United Kingdom, 1st January 2011 - 1st January 2020, All categories, Web Search
Data source: Google Trends, United Kingdom, 1st January 2011–1st January 2020, Travel Category, Web Search
