The 2012 Traveler Report sponsored by Google and Ipsos is out, and it makes some interesting observations about how people are using Web sources to aid their travel decision making. The report breaks down the statistical data in to three travel groups, Business Travellers, Leisure Travellers and Affluent Travellers (or New Jetsetters ) as we like to call them.

If you’ve read our introduction, then you may already be familiar with our term the “New Breed” of Luxury Traveler or “New Jetsetters”.  We see them as socially responsible, independent explorers that travel the World Wide Web, researching social media and other resources to create a unique, personalized experience before they set out.  Well, we wanted to see what these “New Jetsetters” were doing and how they were doing it, so we focused on the Leisure/Affluent traveller groups and discovered some interesting trends. Here’s what we found.

When the question was asked about what type of sites Leisure/Affluent consumers use to plan a trip, the breakdown looked like this:

When asked about the type of planning activities Luxury/Affluent travelers perform the response was:

The 2012 Traveler report is no doubt valuable information to Travel Marketers and Luxury Travel “Specialists”, but that’s not us.  We are simply independent “travellers” so we found it interesting to understand how independent travellers do their homework and make their decisions.  We were surprised that travel review sites were ranked relatively low, but with the recent backlash over the authenticity of some reviews on sites like TripAdvisor that may be understandable. The report confirmed that more and more of us are watching online video as part of our research, and that up to 70% of New Jetsetters are researching online before they even decide where to go.  We think that’s great news!  If you would like a copy of the full report it’s here.

Happy Travels!

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About Steve Thompson

Steve Thompson is Co-Founder of New Jetsetters with over 20 years experience writing about luxury travel. You might say Steve was “born” with the travel bug. Born in the western foothills of the legendary Black Forest in Germany, he spent the first 12 years of his life tagging along behind his parents as they explored Europe. His first memories are of exploring German castles, and his early childhood education consisted of navigating the Austrian Alps, and mastering equestrian skills at the small sea-side town of Maspalomas, along the Spanish coast. Find out more about Steve below:

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