Independent research released by leading competitive intelligence and research company, Hitwise, highlights that icelolly.com is now officially the UK’s largest package holiday comparison site.
Despite challenging market conditions widely reported across the package holidays sector – Hitwise report the ‘travel agency’ category to be -16% vs. the same period last year across the first five months of 2019 – icelolly.com has achieved visits growth vs. other brands in the category.
icelolly.com has shown impressive growth, most notably:
- icelolly.com recorded the biggest quarter on quarter increase in visits across Q1 2019, growing +101% and significantly outperforming the market average growth of +30% for period.
- icelolly.com grew visits +3% in May vs. the same period last year, outperforming the market average of -16% and between -25% to -50% for other travel brands in the study.
The research also looked specifically at the visitors researching package holidays to determine not only the size of the audience but also the quality of booking leads generated by the respective travel brands in the study.
A ‘Visitors’ segment included 2.8m visitors that viewed a flight and hotel in the same user session during the 13 weeks prior to 1 June 2019. Hitwise also created a ‘Bookers’ audience segment that included 318,000 visits that had subsequently booked a flight and hotel package.
This research highlighted:
- icelolly.com had the largest share of package holiday visitors across all brands, highlighting that users prefer icelolly above other brands when comparing package holidays.
- icelolly.com also attracts the largest share of package holidays bookers, highlighting that not only is it driving the largest share of visitors but also the highest quality of visitors, determined by subsequent bookings delivered.
Awareness of the icelolly.com brand now stands at 40% – an increase of +5% since the turn of the year – reflecting the company’s ambition of becoming one of the UK’s favourite holiday brands.
Commenting on the research, Ross Matthews, Chief Marketing Officer said:
“icelolly.com has undergone transformational change in the last few years. We’re immensely proud of our business and our recent award wins, including Travel Marketing Awards ‘Travel Brand of the Year 2019 (<£25m)’.
“This new independent research confirms what we’ve already been discussing with our partners including the UK’s largest tour operators, OTA’s, travel agents and cruise lines with whom we have forged strong relationships: icelolly.com is the No1 holiday price comparison.
Lisa Luu, Global Head of Insights, Hitwise, commented “At Hitwise, we combine the largest daily panel of online behaviour with market-leading consumer survey data to deliver in-depth actionable insights. For this particular research project we’ve been able to establish icelolly.com’s growing market share relative to other travel brands whilst also demonstrating the quality of their ‘booking’ audience”.
ENDS
Notes
- icelolly.com’s “Do it for the Stories” campaign debuted in December 2018 to highlight the stories that customers create and experience while on holiday. icelolly can help to save holidaymakers time and money whatever type of holiday they are seeking, essentially, “We’ll find the deal to get you there.”
- The company’s business partnership with ITV has seen an extensive TV media plan launched in 2019 including sponsorships of ITV2’s Family Guy and American Dad, as well the controversial Piers Morgan’s Life Stories.
- icelolly.com recently received a five star rating on Trustpilot, placing the business at the very top of its category in the sector and making it the most trusted holiday comparison and deals website in the UK. More than 9 out of 10 users who have reviewed icelolly rate the service as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’.
- As well as being named as Travel Brand of the Year (<£25m) at the Travel Marketing Awards 2019, icelolly.com was recognised for ‘Best Use of Social Media’ and ‘Travel & Tourism eCommerce Website of the Year 2018’ at the Northern eCommerce Awards; ‘Innovation in Integration: Combining Tech Powers’ at the 2018 dotmailer Email Marketing Awards: the dotties; and was named ‘Best Website’ at the Northern Digital Awards 2019.