The growing domestic tourism market in the UK is posing increasing challenges to leisure travel abroad.

The latest research from Microsoft highlights the greater popularity of domestic holidays compared to leisure travel abroad, as well as offering new insight into online purchase journeys of leisure travel consumers and their destination preferences.

While domestic tourism has grown sharply in the last 9 years and in 2018 was a 14 billion pound industry with 57% of the general population vacationing at home.

Domestic tourism is forecast in 2019 to grow to 69% of the population . This lucrative market overshadows the abroad holiday market which has engaged less than 20% of the general population in the last 9 years. Growing movements including Brexit and ecotourism has also been linked to the future growth of domestic tourism in the UK.

The top overall destinations based on online searches in May were found to be Spain, Cornwall, Turkey, Wales, Scotland, Devon, Greece, Tenerife, Norfolk and Benidorm.

The most popular domestic holiday destinations were Scotland, Cornwall, Wales, Devon, Norfolk, Yorkshire, London, York, Lake District and Glasgow.

12% of consumers who booked a holiday abroad considered a domestic holiday in their online purchase journey.Holidaymakers abroad are more price sensitive than domestic holidaymakers despite domestic holidays on average costing more than a package holiday abroad while domestic holidaymakers are driven by brand loyalty whereas holidaymakers abroad are driven by destination curiosity

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