New Orleans' French Quarter Back on Top of priceline,com's 50 Labor Day 2006 Destinations
New York City's Upper Midtown Neighborhood the #1 Most-Requested
NORWALK, CT, August 28, 2006. One year later, New Orleans is showing more signs of rebounding from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. In its annual survey of destinations receiving the most hotel room reservation requests for the upcoming Labor Day long weekend (September 2-4), priceline.com(R) (Nasdaq: PCLN) found that New Orleans' French Quarter made its way back onto the list after a one-year absence.
To compile its list of the Top 50 Labor Day travel destinations, priceline.com looked at a sampling of more than 30,000 hotel room booking requests made by priceline.com customers for the September 2-4, 2006 period. Since the priceline.com study is based on actual booking requests, and not on consumer preference polls or votes, priceline.com believes the study is one of the more accurate predictors of future travel trends.
New Orleans' return to the list of most popular destinations was a full year in the making. Priceline.com conducts periodic destination surveys for major holiday periods and the French Quarter was a perennial favorite among its customers. In addition to consistently ranking in the Top 50, New Orleans was the 18th most-popular destination for Labor Day 2004. After Hurricane Katrina hit the city on August 29, 2005, New Orleans disappeared from subsequent priceline.com Top 50 lists, only to re-appear today in the #40 spot.
In other list results of note, New York City's Upper Midtown neighborhood became the #1 most-requested destination for Labor Day 2006, replacing the Las Vegas Strip vicinity, which had occupied the top spot for each of the past two years.
Destinations recording the biggest gains in popularity year over year include Boston's Copley area (+21 spots), Maui's Wailea/Makena (+20 spots), Chicago's O'Hare area (+20 spots), New York's Midtown East (+17 spots), Downtown St. Louis (+16 spots), Downtown Seattle (+14 spots) and the San Antonio Riverwalk area (+14 spots).
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