The Truth About Travel: What the Data Says

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - July 08, 2016) - It doesn't take much to find out what American tastes are in travel. All it takes is two decades of data from one site known for booking a trip every other second. That would be Expedia, which recently released numbers about what has stayed consistent over time in people's travel habits.

Not surprisingly, the top destination now and over all that time for U.S. travelers is Las Vegas. Sin City gets the searches, Expedia says, whether that is for hotels, car rentals and best ways to save money on a vacation. Mexico is the top international destination searched in the U.S. -- more specifically, Cancun. And the most popular flight route over all that time has been, without fail, LAX to JFK. And one last exciting bit of trivia from the study revealed what Expedia is considering to be the most complex trip booked on that online travel site: a 14-stage trip spanning 80 days, departing from Budapest and ending in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

In other news, Tours.com's Travel-Intel highlights trends in honeymoon and romance travel to find many couples ditching the honeymoon and settling for the mini-moon, according to a survey from Westin Hotels & Resorts. And those newly wed couples that do subscribe to the traditional week of romance are choosing more active vacations with multi-destinations, and fitness and wellness considerations at front and center. With time out of the office at a premium these days, newlyweds are getting creative about their honeymoon travel, and making those moments count, the study explains.

These stories and others are featured in the latest issue of Travel-Intel, a weekly publication sent to 103,000 travel agents in North America and posted on Tours.com for travel consumer viewing.

Another hot topic in the news of travel concerns the hardships flying. However, Travel-Intel has come across some shows how airports are becoming destinations in themselves, oases of relaxation and hubs of great shopping. The study engaged 3000 flyers from a variety of countries to find some consistent results showing mostly that good shopping opportunities equal happy passengers as does access to an airport lounge. Dallas/Ft. Worth Airport (DFW) is catching on to these notions. It opened a bustling Aveda hair salon, a Jo Malone London and a Mac Cosmetics last month.

For summer destination resort picks, Travel-Intel looks at Vermont's Twin Farms, a fully inclusive luxury resort on a 300-acre spread once owned by Nobel Prize-winning novelist Sinclair Lewis. Only 20 rooms and suites there, each its own haven, with all meals as gourmet and farm-to-table, and all services personalized. Destination Vermont comes alive in summer with state fairs, farmers markets, horse shows and plenty of festivals. Twin Farms is a member of the exclusive Kurtz-Ahlers collection of luxury hotels, resorts and destination specialists.

Finally, Disney Cruise Lines is making some changes to its fleet and some of those have to do with a revamping of the Disney Wonder. Travel-Intel highlights what's in store for the Disney Wonder once it goes into dry-dock in September and resumes its sailing schedule from Galveston in November.

Travel-Intel is written by travel industry journalists and focuses on changing trends in travel. Stories come from a variety of places and positions, whether travel industry conferences and expos, or onsite at popular hotels, exotic resorts, cruise ships and ports, and destinations near and far. Current issues and archives can be viewed at www.travel-intel.com.

"We look at travel, not only as a constantly changing field of news and possibilities, but also as an industry," says Lark Gould, content editor for Travel-Intel. "So we try to give both travel agents and travel consumers the wide scope of where travel is heading and what they need to know to make good decisions now."

As a veteran travel journalist who has been covering the travel industry for more than 30 years, Lark Gould puts her incisive perspective into the weekly publication, with features and news updates, and also "packages" issues that present great travel deals to be found at hotels and resort locations worldwide. Travel-Intel can be viewed as a stand-alone publication on Tours.com. Gould publishes travel columns and stories for Barclay's Travel Community, the Washington Times, Business Travel Executive, GoBankingrate.com and Business Traveler USA, as well as eTravel.news and Larkslist.

About Tours.com -- the parent company of two well-established tourism websites and three trade newsletters. Tours.com, The only Worldwide Directory of Tours and Vacations, provides a deep and searchable database of tour and vacation operators. Sightseeing.com is the resource for local sightseeing and attractions worldwide. Trade newsletters include Travel-Intel a weekly compendium of research and packages for North American retail agents and Sightseeing News & Views -- highlighting the most interesting developments in sightseeing, attractions and travel brands and VR Tourism News -- the first VR newsletter for the travel industry. Tours.com celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2015.

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