Hotels.com Reveals Casablanca as the Hottest Destination for Irish Travellers in June

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Sep 27, 2010, 01:27 ET

DUBLIN, Sept. 27 /PRNewswire/ --Hotels.com has revealed in its latest poll of the fastest rising destinations that Casablanca has come out top of the new league table for Irish travellers.

The Hotels.com 'hot list' has revealed a 496% increase in searches for the Moroccan city on the Irish Hotels.com site in June 2010 compared with June 2009. The monthly league table shows the destinations which are experiencing the biggest growth in searches compared to the same period the year before.

New Dehli was a surprise second on June's list with searches increasing for the Indian capital by 477% while the town of Locarno, Italy came third with a 443% increase.

Irish holiday destination favourite Playa De Las Americas in Tenerife came in at number nine on the table, while the ever popular Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands ranked 16th.

Surprise entries in the top 20 included Beirut at number 13 with a 365% uplift in searches for the Lebanon capital compared with June of last year. The town of Canterbury in the UK also experienced a surge in popularity ranking 17th overall. Astonishingly there were no US destinations in the top 20 list, although hotels in New York City have always been a perennial favourite with Irish travellers.

Alison Couper, Communications Director at Hotels.com, said: "There were some real surprises in the top 20 list in June with Casablanca coming out on top. The figures indicate that North Africa is becoming increasingly popular with Irish travellers wanting to holiday outside the Eurozone, with both Marrakech and Alexandria in Egypt making the list."

About Hotels.com

As part of the Expedia group which operates in all major markets, Hotels.com offers more than 120,000 quality hotels, B&Bs and serviced apartments worldwide, including a wide variety of hotels in Chicago, Orlando hotels and LA hotels. If a customer can find the same deal for less on a prepaid hotel, Hotels.com will match it. Hotels.com benefits from one of the largest hotel contracting teams in the industry negotiating the best rates for its customers, plus there are 1.8 million reviews from users who have actually stayed in the hotels to ensure customers make an informed choice when booking. Hotels.com won the Gold Award for best hotel booking site in Webuser magazine in February 2009.

The company currently operates more than 70 Hotels.com sites around the world including 31 sites in 24 languages across EMEA.

The European sites launched in the UK in 2001 and now attract several million unique users every month. Thousands of people book bed nights through Hotels.com every day.