From perfectly filtered social media posts to heartfelt recollections of friends, visually stunning scenes from movies, and glossy magazine covers, travelers are exposed to an array of inspiration sources that seed ideas of spectacular places they hope to one day see. But with a world of options, travelers must carefully whittle down their options to the one that most speaks to their wishes. Most travelers take just a handful of leisure trips each year. After accounting for the trips to visit family and friends or to attend social obligations – weddings, graduations, reunions – the pool of trips left where travelers actually get to choose their destination independently shrinks. Within various markets across the globe, including the U.S., Brazil, Australia, China, Mexico, Germany and the U.K, less than half of leisure travelers traveled to a destination they could choose at their whim over the past year.

Growth rates in the world of public online travel once again slowed in 2018, but remained in double-digit territory, rising more than twice as fast as the total global travel market. Collective gross bookings from 10 publicly reported companies across the globe rose 19% year over year (YoY). After tracking Ctrip’s ongoing yearly rise in anticipation, the Chinese OTA disclosed total gross booking figures for 2018 that indicate it has finally surpassed both Expedia and Booking, despite slower annual growth in Asia Pacific. Currencies rebounded in Europe but remained unstable in Latin America.

This product includes key data collected specifically for interactive charts.