Our monthly Cruise Search Index reflects change in cruise demand and online search market share. For the month of January 2009, U.S. online cruise search is estimated at 14.0 million monthly unique individuals. This represents an astounding increase of 47.8% versus last month and 15.0% versus the same month last year. This seems an indication that the Internet has come of age for the cruise line industry, and the recent proliferation of cruise deals across the Internet and traditional media have prompted a lot of window shoppers. This is good news for the cruise industry, as when the broader economy begins to stabilize the window shoppers will begin to convert to cruisers.
| % Change for January '09 | ||
| vs Last Year | vs. Last Month | |
| Total Internet Traffic | 4.0% | 0.6% |
| Total Cruise Search | 15.0% | 47.9% |
Percentages in the charts below represent the approximate share of all online cruise traffic.
Chart 1 - % of traffic for top Cruise Lines from all cruise related traffic (click to enlarge)
Chart 2 - % of traffic for top booking sites from all cruise related traffic (click to enlarge)
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Sources: Comscore, Google Analytics