Travel Sector Leaders, Data and Analysis

From:

SISTRIX Data Journalism Team (EN)

Modified: 08.04.2025

Visibility Leaders Travel Winners – April 2025

newzealand.com

Visibility Leader
Travel 2025 “know”

booking.com

Visibility Leader
Travel 2025 “do”

abta.com

Visibility Leader
Travel 2025 “know”

raileurope.com

Visibility Leader
Travel 2025 “do”

Reports and Data for travel sector search marketers

Jump to the content that interests you, or just scroll through. Many different travel reports are available and this page will update over time.

• The winning content directories are shown above, and in detail here.
• The trackers are update once a week
• Traffic volume and growth
• High Performance Content Formats from the sector
• Read the key findings here
• Travel trends are available
• Examples of niche success have been highlighted
• Our SectorWatch studies for Travel Purchases, Family Travel, sustainable travel, Backpacks and Rucksacks and Paddle Boards are linked below.

A list of hundreds of winners and high performance content directories, from many sectors, is available in the Visibility Leaders overview page.

Travel Sector Traffic volume

The commercial (Do) keyword set 5-year growth chart is shown below. The current average monthly search volume, based on the previous 12 months from March 2025, is 736,099

The informational (Know) keyword set 5-year growth chart is shown below. The current average monthly search volume, based on the previous 12 months from March 2025, is 161,913

Top travel domains – trackers

The top travel domains, based on the keyword lists used in this project, are shown below. They update once a week. The first tracker shows top domains for the informational keyword set.

The second tracker shows the domains for the commercial keyword set.

The sector trackers above have been running since February 2025

High Performance Content Formats

Here is a list of the highest performing content directories in the sector.

Key Findings in Travel SEO

There’s no “why should I buy a holiday” in the travel sector which makes the results very commercially focused. The sites are generally very big too but when you break the sites down you can often find pockets of success in tightly focused topics.

As we identified in 2023, you can’t compete with owners. If someone is looking for information on travel visas, the official websites are the only ones that get the traffic.

Category coverage for commercial content is still key

This statement appears in our leaders reports every single time in some form or another and should be burned into content planner’s heads by now!

For more detailed insights, read the full report

Trends in travel

The 2025 TrendWatch travel report includes more data and back-story analysis.

• northern lights tourism
• norwegian fjords cruise
• lapland holidays
• river cruises
• cruise from southampton
• serry beach resort
• airplane phone holder
• skin hydration travel set
• riyadh air

A 2023 TrendWatch report on travel is also available.

Niche knowledge and blog content

There are few examples of high performance blog, personal or even niche commercial websites among commercial terms. One interesting example is seatosummit.co.uk. This website has a high-performance commercial sales directory at https://seatosummit.co.uk/collections/

The ranking distribution – the percentage of keywords ranking across the first 10 pages of search results, is very high. Rankings are grouped around bags, camping, sleeping bags, backpacks and tent. It serves as a good example for digital marketers to learn from.

https://www.nomadicmatt.com/ is a private blog that we highlighted in 2023. In 2025 it is still ranking well, with 30% of keywords for which /travel-guides is ranking on page 1. The number of keywords for which the directory has, however, dropped drastically.

Travel-related SectorWatch reports from SISTRIX

Travel Purchases

A separate study has been completed in which B2C product-focused keywords are researched. Flight socks, cabin bags, luggage straps, neck support pillow, chargers and adaptors are obvious keywords, but we’ve identified a few new trends.

Major retailers dominate rankings with Amazon way out front but specialist retailers and brands are also appearing. Read the full SectorWatch report here.

Family Travel

Search marketing facts and data, domains and URLs that lead the family travel sector. Did you know that the average cost of a holiday for a family of four is £4792? Read the full report which includes these top domains:

• tui.co.uk
• onthebeach.co.uk
• firstchoice.co.uk
• thetimes.co.uk
• 101holidays.co.uk

Sustainable travel

Our 2022 report on sustainable travel lists keywords and leading domains such as responsibletravel.com, sustainabletravel.org, thetravelfoundation.org.uk and theguardian.com.

Backpacks and Rucksacks

The backpacks and rucksack report will be interesting if you’re focusing on targeted ecommerce. Charlie WIlliams surfaces the top terms, top domains and top URLs. For example: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/recommended/leisure/best-backpacks/

Paddle Boards

Charlie Williams looks deep into the paddle boards sector with this SectorWatch report.

“One of the unexpected trends after the Covid-19 pandemic was the growth in outdoor activities, sports and pursuits, and one of the biggest winners was paddleboarding, with people taking up the sport in the wake of travel restrictions in 2021.” – Charlie WIlliams [Source]

2023 winners analysed

Callum Lockwood analysed the leading examples in 2023. Read that report for more insights.

Opportunities listed

The Visibility Leaders project was formed to create a resource for anyone working in search marketing.

If you’re in the travel industry, the data here gives you a chance to find and analyse content projects that Google is rewarding. Spend time on those sites to find out why they might be working for informational or commercial content.

• What is the style and tone of voice?
• How are these sites showing experience and expertise?
• Are the sites easy to navigate? Are they fast?
• Are the sites niche-focused?
• Is there a huge brand helping to attract clicks?
• What value-add services are customers being offered?
• Is there an easy sign-up process, or an incentive to sign up?
• Are the images good quality and original?
• Which other forms of media are being used? Video, PDF, lists, infographics, for example?

Presentation Slides

This presentation was made at BrightonSEO in April 2025

Do your own analysis. Find leading competitors

Our data engineers have processed billions of data points to bring you the leading content directories, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do some research for your own sector. Our SISTRIX Academy for Competitor Research shows exactly how to create lists of keywords, find leading domains and then analyse them for visibility leaders.

Methodology and source data

We’re always transparent about where our data comes from. We don’t synthesise anything, we just take ‘what Google says’ and present it in ways that help SEOs, for all domains. SISTRIX data has been through critical review for two Phd theses at Goethe University in Frankfurt.

In this research we have used two expertly curated sets of keywords that have been filtered for intent. One list has a dominant information (know) intent and the other has a dominant commercial (do) intent.

From this list of keywords we generate a list of high-performance domains and directories that are checked again by hand. Read more about what these high performance directories are (HPCF) here.

The final list of top directories is then tagged with intent and sector and added to the HPCF database.

The keyword lists for the project are available: Do and Know (Google Sheet)

Notes

• Page 1 ratio = the percentage of ranking keywords that are on page 1 of the SERP
• Monthly clicks = as estimated using SISTRIX CTR modelling.
• Content VI = the Visibility Index of the content directory.

Updates

This report is from April 2025. The previous travel studies from 2023 are available here.

• 7th April 2025: Added Tracker and HPCF table