What’s on travelers minds?

Tripadvisor’s annual travel trends survey, TravelCast was published this week with few interesting findings, and few findings that reflect opinion diversities between travelers from different destinations.

The picture on the right is of a place called ‘Ksar Soltane’ in Jerba, Tunisia. This town is, according to an analysis of the search activity of TripAdviosrs users, the next hot tourist spot for 2008. Only 3 low cost airlines in Europe are ready for the challenge, with direct flights of JetairFly from Liege starting at €149 for a return trip in November, according to Skyscanner’s database search results.

Green and Terror on top of the concerns. Its interesting to see how two subjects that are so different can be easily brought up into a discussion about travel choices. Terrorism surpasses natural disasters and cost drivers as the most important external factor to choose a travel destination, which is perhaps its strongest victory in the battle on public’s opinion.

The environmental concerns are the most eye-catching evidence in this survey. Only 26% of the respondents said they “Will be more environmentally conscious in their travel decisions in the coming year”, but this figure drops even lower to 19% when British participants were asked about the same statement. Not very much aligned with the stands of the UK ‘green air taxes’ that were imposed earlier in 2007, but perhaps reflect better the debate on the need to impose such taxes at all.

Some airlines seem to be fueling this debate more than others, taking into account that ‘Dirty old aircrafts’ are causing a significant portion of the pollution, which is a chance for more efficient airlines to win a small yet important battle against their older competitors who usually operate an older fleet. Easyjet and Ryanair use the same terminologies in this debate, which so far results in a ₤5-₤10 tax on flight tickets bought in the UK, and a plan of the European Union Emissions committee to add flights into the Emissions Trading Schemes, which will result in significant costs for airlines.

Back to the survey we begun with, other concerns of travelers were cleanness, which somehow made it to the first place in the general concerns of the participants; Apparently 28% of the travelers find airplanes to be polluted, which could eventually result in airlines marketing themselves as: ‘World cleanest airplanes’ or present the ‘Vacuum your row’ programs for dedicated cleaners.

Last winners: Schiphol, Amsterdam’s airport is the favorite airport in the world, While British Airways is the most favorable airline outside of the U.S,. One last note: 34% of the Americans are planning to visit Europe in the coming year, which is quite a staggering figure if we take into account the US Dollar current currency exchange rate, and the fact that 100M Americans might be planning their way to Europe in this very time…