With years of cruise industry experience, digital agency, BANC, has revisited the cruise booking trends that were covered in previous research.
This was undertaken to determine to see what trends were on the rise, and which channels were creating the most traffic and bookings, as well as insights from the company’s call tracking partner, Mediahawk.
The research uncovered some new data and trends from the first half of 2024, which cruise businesses can utilise in their forthcoming marketing strategies.
It was found that potential cruisers were not using searches to find their cruise holidays as before.
For example, the research found that there was a 25% year-on-year decrease in searches for ‘Cheap Cruise Holidays’; a 39% yoy decrease in searches for ‘All Inclusive Cruise Holidays’ and a 42% yoy drop in the number of searches for ‘Cruise Holidays from Southampton’.
However, there was a 55% increase in searches for solo cruises in January, 2024, suggesting that brands looking to target the solo cruiser should market cabins in that month.
In addition, solo cruise and travel posts were popular across social media: #SoloCruise had over 5,000 posts on Instagram and nearly 2,500 posts on TikTok; #SoloCruiser has over 1,000 posts on Instagram and #SoloTravel had over 9.6 mill posts on Instagram and 905,000 posts on TikTok.
Interest in 2026 cruises rose significantly, suggesting that businesses should be investing in their organic strategy way in advance.
There was also a 31% increase in paid visitor traffic in the travel sector.
