Ice Travel Group Pulse: Bookings surge confirms Sunshine weekend impact

Increased activity on the sister holiday comparison sites increasingly focussed on summer departures 

The latest weekly Pulse trends tracker from Icelolly.com and TravelSupermarket parent Ice Travel Group  has supported claims of a post New Year bookings surge last weekend.

The twin holiday comparison sites said it saw the so-called Sunshine Saturday and Sunday hike in the seven days to January 8.

Chris Webber, head of deals and holidays said: “Sunshine Saturday and Sunday brought with them the much-anticipated increase in searches and bookings.

“Searches were up by more than 40% vs the previous weekend on both sites, while bookings increased by 66% on TravelSupermarket and 75% on icelolly.com versus the previous week.

“Summer 2023 is becoming more dominant by the day - two thirds of searches and bookings on icelolly and just over half on TravelSupermarket are for summer.

“We’ve seen increases for the likes of Costa Blanca, Majorca and Turkey as summer heads the holiday shopping list.”

Icelolly.com saw increases for most of the key summer travel months, week-on-week, and summer 2023 departures now account for two thirds of all searches on the site.

Summer searches also increased on TravelSupermarket rising to 54% of all searches. May, June and July had the biggest share increases, week-on-week.

For icelolly.com users, Majorca, Crete and Costa Blanca had the biggest week-on-week share increase while TravelSupermarket users prompted search share increases for the Antalya and Dalaman in Turkey.