NEWS FROM HOTELS.COM

BRITS DESCEND(ANTS) ON HAWAII

Films in 2012 cause surges in popularity to movie destinations

In the midst of movie award season, Hotels.com today reveals the top films of 2012 that are sparking huge travel trends into 2013, as UK travellers looked to visit the location of their favourite films. The overall most popular film of 2012 was The Descendants, where searches to Hawaii and its glorious beaches that George Clooney battled to protect, increased by 282% in January 2012, compared to January 2011.

Skyfall may have been awarded a Golden Globe for Best Original Song, but it also fared well in the travel chart with searches to its locations of Istanbul up 171%, and Shanghai up 108% in its month of release compared to the same period last year.

Fictional film destinations also proved extremely popular as holiday destinations in 2012, with The Hunger Games inspiring an increase of searches of 141% to its location of Asheville, North Carolina and The Hobbit also caused a 114% spike in searches to New Zealand on Hotels.com when it was released in December 2012. Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2 also inspired “Twihards” to visit its main location of Vancouver, Canada, with searches up 89% in November 2012.

Top movie destinations experiencing the greatest search increases following their release:

	Movie	Destination	Comparison period	Search increase
1	The Descendants	Hawaii, USA	January 2012 vs. January 2011	282%
2	Skyfall	Istanbul, Turkey	October 2012 vs. October 2011	171%
3	Hunger games	Asheville, North Carolina	March 2012 vs. March 2011	141%
4	The Hobbit	New Zealand	Dec 2012 vs. Dec 2011	114%
5	Skyfall	Shanghai, China	October 2012 vs. October 2011	108%
6	Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2	Vancouver, Canada	Nov 2012 vs. Nov 2011	89%

Kate Hopcraft of Hotels.com said, “The search increases to movie destinations just go to show that our love of film doesn’t just end when we leave the cinema, as film fanatics from across the UK have been inspired to visit the top locations of 2012 in real life. With the Oscars just around the corner, it will be interesting to see whether the winning productions spark further travel interest as fans look to recreate the cinematic magic for themselves.”

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For more information please contact:

Jennifer Murdoch or Bethany Pearson at Frank PR on 020 7693 6999 or email hotels.com@frankpr.it

Or Kate Hopcraft, khopcraft@hotels.com, 020 7019 2165 / Laura Watts, lwatts@expedia.com  020 7019 2761

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