Boracay, Singapore: Top travel destinations
Manila Bulletin

The travel season is far from over, at least for Filipinos. According to Yahoo! Search Trends, Filipino holiday makers plan their vacation by searching for their favorite local and overseas destination as well as accommodations.

Yahoo! editors have meticulously aggregated popular searches related to travel to reveal the most popular destinations searched in the Philippines in April 2011, as well as collated results from November and April 2010 to offer comparative figures.

According to the recent statistics, based on search query and ranking frequency, Boracay tops the five summer travel destinations, which includes Palawan, Batangas, Puerto Galera and Bohol.

The beach destination maintained the top spot throughout the three search periods affirming its popularity regardless of the season. Palawan took the second spot in the ranking, securing its position once again in the top three, while Batangas, which is just a short distance from Metro Manila, ranked third.

Top three overseas destinations for Filipinos
Singapore featured as the top overseas destination in April 2011 results, overtaking Canada and the US, which had led the ranking in the two previous search periods while Qatar and the US ranked second and third in this category.

Henryl Moreno, Manager, Editorial for Search & Platforms in Southeast Asia indicated, “Most of the foreign destinations in the overseas search category are countries where Filipinos are looking for jobs as opposed to leisure. Singapore has continued to feature as a preferred employment destination for Filipinos which was also reflected in the previous search queries where it ranked third.”

Accommodation preferences
Accommodation search, another important decision for travel planning, illustrated interesting trends in Filipino online users’ travel preferences. Amana Water Park featured as the most popular place for accommodation, while Bosay Resort and Club Manila East ranked in second and third position respectively.

“It is interesting to note that the very same destinations emerged as the three most searched accommodations during the April 2010 search period as well,” commented Moreno. “The choice of accommodations indicates that Filipinos prefer recreational getaways which offer leisure environments and resort facilities that are destinations in themselves.” (Accommodation-related searches were not conducted in November 2010)

Yahoo! Search Trends aggregates millions of searches performed every day across Yahoo! properties to indicate the pulse on what people are thinking and talking about. Searches represent the people and what matters to them most; from fleeting moods to entrenched attitudes of Internet users across the world. This has been extremely successful in sifting through searches for trend-spotting, historical insight, forecasting projections, and big-picture analysis.