The Top Domains and Content for Winter Holidays

From:

Charlie Williams

Published: 21.08.2025

This month, SectorWatch is bundling up warm and heading off-piste into the frosty world of winter holidays to see which brands are sleigh-ing the search rankings – and which need to give their strategy a warm-up.

With the peak season approaching, we’re checking on the travel operators and destinations whose organic strategy is as warm as a cosy cabin fireplace, melting Google’s heart and climbing rankings. Who’s snowballed their way to search success? And whose organic visibility has gone into hibernation?

From sun-soaked Canary Island escapes to Alpine skiing or magical Christmas markets in Vienna, winter holidays represent a thriving slice of the UK travel market – and one that shows no signs of cooling down.

Recent research by ABTA found 29% of Brits were planning to take a winter holiday in 2023/24, with booking numbers increasing by 16% year-on-year. 

With the broader UK travel market generating £34 billion in revenue in 2022 and forecast to reach £42 billion by 2027, winter holidays represent a significant and growing segment.

Another study found that the European winter tourism market is projected to grow from $214.4 billion in 2025 to $383.9 billion by 2035, and online bookings will make up 42% of the total.

In this frosty but lucrative market, search visibility isn’t just a nice-to-have. Travel brands can’t afford to put their SEO out in the cold, especially with AI-powered search shaking up the results. So, we’re seeing which travel brands are reaching the peak of the search results.

The top domains in the UK for winter holidays

So, who’s warming up searchers with irresistible offers, and who is stuck in the lodge watching others race by?

We curated 615 keywords with a ‘do’ (commercial or transactional) intent and 419 with a ‘know’ (informational) intent to act as a sample of some of the most popular searches. Based on those keyword sets, here are the winning domains:

Do searches:

1. tui.co.uk
2. crystalski.co.uk
3. onthebeach.co.uk

Know searches:

1. tui.co.uk
2. cntraveller.com
3. postoffice.co.uk

Top 20 domains for transactional (‘do’) searches for winter holidays: 

Top 20 domains for informational (‘know’) searches for winter holidays: 

What’s trending in the CRM search market?

By analyzing our curated keywords and TrendWatch data, we can monitor CRM software search demand patterns. With our dashboard configured for market trends, we’re charting the rising pipelines of queries increasing in demand over recent months or multiple years.

• winter holidays 2025
• winter sun holidays
• skiing bulgaria
• winter holiday destinations for sun
• sunshine holidays at christmas
• holidays in december
• christmas holidays 2025
• cheap holiday for february
• krakow christmas holidays
• cape verde holidays in january
• where is hot in february
• best christmas markets in europe
• best europe christmas holidays
• where to go for winter sun
• best family ski holiday austria

If you’d like insight into more search trends and the back story of those rising keyword searches, subscribe to TrendWatch, the monthly newsletter from the SISTRIX Data Journalism Team.

The top URLs for winter holidays

With a keyword list in SISTRIX, you’re not just spotting which domains are guiding customers right down the booking slope. You’re also getting a deeper dive into the stats that matter from the individual pages catching a traveller’s eye to the rich features Google adds to the results. 

Content examples: What type of content is performing?

• One travel giant leads the pack: TUI is the clear frontrunner in the winter travel space. It ranks in the top 100 search results for about 95% of all keywords in our sample commercial keywords and manages to appear on page one for over 76% of them
  • For context, TUI’s SectorWatch Visibility Index is nearly double that of the next closest domain (Crystal Ski) for commercial keywords
  • TUI also tops the chart for our ‘know’ keywords with page-one rankings for 279 keywords (66% of our informational query list)
• Holiday booking sites dominate: Eight of the top ten domains for our ‘do’ keywords are established tour operators or online travel agencies focused on package holidays. These include major generalist travel brands like TUI, Jet2holidays, Thomas Cook, On the Beach, and Loveholidays, each of which secures a page-one ranking for roughly one-third of the “do” keywords on average
• Ski specialists among the holiday booking sites: Ski-focused tour operators are also near the summit, with Crystal Ski, Inghams, and Iglu Ski all in the top ten. We found a lot of demand for skiing holidays, and it’s clear winter sports travel is a huge part of this sector. Nine of our top 25 domains are niche ski holiday providers, highlighting the prominence of dedicated ski holiday providers as Google looks to offer dedicated offerings from reputable suppliers
• Strong competition (beyond the #1 spot): Aside from TUI’s dominance, no single site monopolises the winter holiday queries. Instead, multiple players capture visibility: Every site in the top 10 appears on page one for at least about 27% of the keywords. The top-ten page-one coverage ranges from ~27% (for the #10 domain) up to TUI’s 76%, indicating that a variety of companies are securing significant portions of the search real estate
• Big commercial sites are also flying high for “know” queries: Major holiday providers dominate with 12 of the top 25 domains. These brands aren’t just selling trips, they’re also packing their pages with inspirational guides. TUI leads the way, but other heavyweights like Trailfinders and British Airways each appear on page one for 100+ queries
• Travel media shines: Trusted editorial content is performing very well for our informational searches. Condé Nast Traveller is the #2 domain, ranking for 386 of our 420 keywords (92%) and nabbing 264 top 10 rankings with its wanderlust-filled articles and galleries. Mainstream outlets like The Times (appearing in 94% of these searches) show that newspaper travel sections pack a punch, too. Even niche guide sites like 101Holidays (149 page-one rankings) and the iconic Lonely Planet (72% coverage) prove that quality, research-driven content still inspires winter travellers
  • Independent travel blogs are also along for the ride, with 4 personal travel blogs in the top 25, proving that first-hand adventures resonate
• All in all, Google isn’t freezing out any content type. This variety shows there’s room for everyone on the winter holiday SERPs, tour giants, publishers, deal-finders or solo bloggers and even the Met Office with their weather guides, as long as their content answers travellers’ needs

High-performance content examples

Having seen the winners, it’s time to unpack the high-performing content formats that are driving bookings for these travel domains.

These are content examples such as pages, directories or templates which consistently rank on page one, proving they’re effective performers across our curated keyword list and the broader winter holidays search landscape.

Through these successful content formats, we’ll uncover what content will navigate its way through Google’s algorithm and drive these brands’ search visibility.

The clear winner in our study is TUI, the world’s largest multinational leisure, travel and tourism company, who stand at number one for both our ‘do’ and ‘know’ keyword lists.

The TUI site ranks for 587 of our 615 ‘do’ keywords (95.29%) and on page one for 76.8% of them. Essentially, if it’s a popular search for a winter break, whether city break, skiing trip or winter sun, TUI are almost always in a position to earn traffic.

Adding to this comprehensive search presence, the site also ranks for 372 (88.5%) of our ‘know’ keywords, with a page one listing 66.4% of the time.

You can see TUI’s success if we look at their Visibility Index score for our ‘do’ keywords where TUI have made consistent improvement for these keywords in recent years.

24 of the top 300 performing pages for our ‘do’ keywords are from TUI with 11 in the top 100.

All but 1 of these pages are in the /holidays/ and /destinations/ directories.

The /destinations/deals/ directory is the one of the most visible in Google’s UK search results and supplies many of the most successful pages for our keyword list.

This directory ranks for 27,513 keywords in the UK, leading to 266,131 visits a month on average, traffic with a value of £422k where you to buy it in Google Ads.

Its success is driven by high performance content, with 29.66% of its rankings for popular keywords on page one and another 20.56% page two.

The directory is home to 239 pages that rank for at least one keyword in the UK at time of writing. These provide dedicated landing pages for every type of holiday deal you can imagine, such deals for all inclusive holidays, for city breaks to Amsterdam and of course for plenty of winter holidays, such as winter sun holidays or trips to see the Northern Lights.

There are also deal pages for each month of the year, helping customers find the best deals for trips in the winter months or any time they want get away.

TUI even have dedicated pages combining locations & holidays types, such as this page targeting deals for honeymoons in Thailand.

This breadth leads to a huge footprint of holiday deals content with specific pages for many popular and long-tail searches.

The rest of the /destinations/ directory is broken down by region, such as holidays to Europe, or countries, such as Greece, plus regions and resorts with in those countries.

TUI’s other directory doing well for our ‘do’ keywords is /holidays/.

This is home to the homepage for each holiday type or destination you can book with TUI, acting somewhat as a main hub for these major travel topics.

However, the /holidays/ directory is also home to some of the best performing content for our ‘know’ keywords.

TUI ranks for 7 of our top 100 ‘know’ pages, and 14 of the top 300.

The /holidays/ directory is home to TUI’s /holidays/weather/ content.

The weather section has a standout 3,614 URLs ranking for at least one keyword. Together, they bring in over 40k rankings, with 40.7% of them on page one, and another 31.93% on page two.

This generates a sky-high 1,592,819 organic visits a month – traffic that’s worth £2.08m!

Things start off as you might expect, with pages solely focused on the weather each month, offering advice on the best locations TUI offers for each month of the year. For example, /holidays/weather/month/march.html which directly answers the question “Where is hot in March?”

Then things get more interesting.

TUI adds pages on the weather for each country, such as this one, looking at the best time to visit Cape Verde.

Next, things become much more granular, with pages on the weather for popular destinations in each country, such as /holidays/weather/asia/indonesia/bali.html. 

And following that, TUI delivers what is almost a programmatic SEO play. A page on the average weather for every month of the year for every popular region, resort or locale for every country TUI offers holidays for.

For example:

• We can see 1,165 pages ranking in the directory /holidays/weather/europe/spain/
• There is a page for every month for every popular Spanish location, from /holidays/weather/europe/spain/andalucia/january.html to /holidays/weather/europe/spain/valencia/december.html
• Plus one for Spain as a whole, of course! (With the topic of ‘Best time to visit Spain’, which is a hugely popular question) and further 12 pages covering what the weather is like in Spain each month of the year, for more specific searches

Want to know what the weather is like in Tenerife in March? TUI have a precise page for that!

This is an excellent example of covering the complete topic, with every month, every destination, and every combination covered.

In our ‘know’ keyword set, the pages on the best locations to visit in November, December, January & February do well, as there are a lot of searches around this facet of winter holiday planning.

Also doing well is TUI’s https://www.tui.co.uk/discover/ directory, with articles on popular topics such as the best places for winter sun or the best destinations for the Christmas holidays.

Of course, it’s not only TUI doing well for our commercial ‘do’ keywords.

Third in our list of winning domains is On The Beach, the UK-based travel agency. On The Beach ranks for 64.1% of our ‘do’ keywords and on page one for 39.1% of them.

The /holidays/ directory is one of the strongest for our keywords, and home to some of On The Beach’s most successful content.

This directory has seen notable growth over the past year. It currently ranks for 60,494 keywords in the UK, with 25% of those on page one. The rankings bring an estimated 872,179 monthly organic visits, which are worth £1.3m.

There are only 190 pages in the directory ranking in the UK. The directory is home to On The Beach’s main homepage for each type of holiday, such as their page for all-inclusive holidays. It’s also where you’ll find pages for each country as well as pages for each destination, such as for Mallorca.

But On The Beach takes this further, offering child pages for important categories.

Take the page for all-inclusive holiday pages as an example. There are child pages for all-inclusive holidays by location, such as this one for Spain.

As the content for many of the biggest holiday topics, these pages rank for many popular head terms and their related longer tail queries. This leads to many of the pages earning substantial traffic, contributing to that impressive total.

Their main winter sun page is a great example from our keyword set of a dedicated page in this directory that is performing very well. Together, all these pages are helping On The Beach do increasingly well for our keyword set, as we can see in this Visibility Index graph focused purely on our ‘do’ keywords.

We should also note Crystal Ski, who take second place in our list and who have 23 pages in our top 300 URLs, including 10% of the top 100.

There are pages from many directories ranking, but one of the most common is the /ski-deals/ section, which is also one of the most popular directories on the site.

This directory has 22 pages ranking for at least one keyword, with topics based on destination, departure airport, special events like Black Friday and even for specific months, such as this one for January 2026.

Together, these focused pages rank for over 2,000 keywords, with 48.53% of them on page one (29.41% page two), making it highly effective content. They bring in an average of 17,811 organic visits a month, a total that would rise to over 30k visits during peak interest months.

Even better is the /ski-resorts/ directory, which also regularly appears for our keyword set, and would appear more often if we added more long-tail queries about different countries & resorts.

This directory ranks for 10,284 keywords at the time of writing, and on page one an outstanding 61.66% of the time.

The directory has 659 pages that appear at least once in the UK search results. There is a page for every ski resort you can think of, from countries like France to individual resorts like Whistler in Canada. Land on the page & you’re given some top-of-the-line information plus, crucially, a clear booking engine with the destination resort already populated. These pages give Crystal a wide net to capture traffic for both highly popular & long-tail skiing destinations.

Together, these pages bring in 149,730 organic visits a month, which would jump to over a quarter of a million organic visitors during peak times.

The site’s consistent growth for our ‘do’ keywords, as measured by the Visibility Index, indicates Google and customers think it’s a great option.

Even better, Crystal actually provides the ski holidays offered by TUI, so every time TUI ranks & gets traffic for ski keywords, they actually get to rank twice!

Back to our ‘know’ keyword set. A very interesting example of the power of one piece of highly successful content comes from the Post Office.

Better known for stamps than ski passes, the Post Office is actually the third-biggest performer, with content that ranks on page one for 223 keywords (53%) from our ‘know’ keyword set (plus ranks 22nd for our ‘do’ keyword set), despite only appearing twice in the top 300 URLs!

Their guide to winter sun holiday destinations was published in November last year, and now ranks for 668 keywords, delivering the Post Office 4,722 organic visits a month, thanks to ranking on page one 20% of the time.

Similarly, the Post Office guide to where in Europe is hot over the winter months ranks for 668 keywords as well, but this time brings in an average of 16,540 organic visits a month from Google.

This article is deceptively simple, but highly effective. It curates a big range of destinations, provides ideas for short and long haul options for each month and adds an extra piece of helpful content with tables of average temperatures and more.

The page is also broken down into small pieces through the use of subheadings, providing clear answers to a wide range of common questions. This creates a wide organic footprint, ranking for many queries both in our keyword sets and generally, helping these two articles compete against much bigger content propositions.

This no doubt also helps the article appear for a variety of rich SERP features, such as People Also Ask questions and, of course, AI Overviews.

Almost 60% of our ‘know’ keywords currently display an AI overview, including many of the most popular queries. For example, ‘where is hot in February’ has an AI Overview, and it links to the Post Office article 5 times.

Another site doing this is the Girl On The Move. Her article on winter sun destinations was published in January and picked up by Google as useful in mid-May.

It has spiked in visibility just in time to appear in our winners list.

This article is the only time she appears in our top 300 “know” URLs, but it does well enough to get her 9th place, despite not having nearly as much information as the Post Office option.

Summary and takeaways

After mapping out the winter holidays search landscape, here are our top insights to help you pack your organic strategy for success:

• Focus on the user’s queries: While this is standard SEO advice, the winter travel sector is a fantastic example of how content designed to target various aspects of the customer’s journey and the questions they ask at each stage pays real dividends
  • Even better, it is an example of how articles that cover multiple aspects of a topic can rank for all the individual questions without the need for a separate page every time
  • But, if you have the information or data to go very granular, it can also precisely answer needs, as with TUI’s weather directory
• Harness brand trust (but back it up with content): Known travel names have a built-in advantage in rankings. Giants like TUI or Jet2holidays can parlay brand recognition into top SERP placements (TUI, for example, appears on page one for over 76% of our sample transactional winter-holiday searches). But even these leaders reinforce trust with robust, optimised content on every subtopic, proving that authority shines brightest when paired with SEO substance
• Leave no query out in the cold: Top performers cover every angle of winter getaways to capture search demand. Winning brands anticipate what travellers search for and serve up dedicated pages for it, whether it’s TUI’s exhaustive weather-by-month guides or Crystal Ski’s index of every ski resort. This thorough, “no stone unturned” approach turns long-tail searches (think “weather in Tenerife in March”) into steady streams of organic traffic
• Inspire as well as convert: The brands leading the pack balance transactional pages with rich informational content; it’s not just about selling a holiday, but also inspiring the trip
• Embrace content diversity: Google isn’t freezing out any content type in winter travel. The SERPs feature tour operators, mainstream publishers, niche ski specialists, deal aggregators and personal travel blogs side by side. The common thread is relevance and quality

Keyword research in the winter holiday sector

To navigate Google’s results for the best-performing content and sites, we compiled a comprehensive suitcase of sample keywords that capture some of the UK public’s most popular winter holiday searches.

When researching these seasonal topics, we always map out our keywords by their search intent. We cluster queries with similar intent to compare content targeting the same search types and customer stages. Since Google matches results to user intent, grouping these queries helps us identify which content formats and styles Google prefers across different destinations in this sector.

For this report, we have two lists of common searches. The first was for ‘know’ keywords, representing common informational searches by UK travellers.

Examples include ‘where is hot in February’, which has an average of 12,700 searches a month in the UK and sees a huge peak each January. Clearly, as the new year hits, some folks look to book a trip to banish those January blues. In January 2025, that peak hit 33,700 searches.

Other example ‘know’ keywords include ‘best destinations for winter sunshine’ (3,350 searches a month on average), ‘best Christmas markets in Europe’ (11,900 searches), ‘best ski resorts in Europe’ (1,750) and ’best places to go in December’ (750).

Our second list is ‘do’ keywords. These are transactional keywords where someone is ready to take an action, such as book a trip, buy a product or hire somebody.

Examples in our list include ‘ski holidays’ (23,400 searches a month in the UK on average), ‘winter sun holidays‘ (10,400 searches), ‘northern lights cruise’ (3,200) and ‘Christmas holiday in sun’ (2,500).

We have a detailed, step-by-step article on keyword research with SISTRIX tools and data, in which you can see our list-building process.

Our SectorWatch process

For this SectorWatch, we used relevant keywords from a curated selection of winter holiday keyword discovery tables.
We selected highly targeted keywords with either a ‘do‘ intent or a ‘know’ intent. From these, we harvest all the ranking keywords for the URLs in the SERPs. We call this the Keyword Environment. Most SERPs will have some mixed intent, so we re-filter the list for the correct intents and sanitise it by hand to leave a smaller, highly-relevant set of searches made by the UK public broken down by searcher journey. The results are based only on the organic search rankings for the chosen keywords.

Curated keyword set and sector click potential

Core keywords: winter holidays, winter sun, ski holidays, Christmas holidays, December holidays, best winter sun destinations, best places for winter sun.

The full data set used for this study is available as a Google Sheet. You can conduct further analysis in the SISTRIX keyword lists feature, including competitor analysis, SERP feature analysis, questions, keyword clusters, and the traffic forecasts shown below.

SectorWatch, TrendWatch and Visibility Leaders are regular publications from the SISTRIX data journalism team. To get email notifications of all our reports, sign up for the newsletter.