In spite of closed border, New Zealand saw plenty of web traffic from 645,000 hotel and flight searches. Photo / William Hook; Pawel Czerwinski, Unsplash

New research has revealed New Zealand as the third most popular holiday destination worldwide.

As international travel returns front-of-mind for holidaymakers around the world, so too have exotic places been returning to the searchbars of internet browsers.

Google searches for flights and hotels over the past 12 months have revealed a group of countries that appear again, and again.

The Maldives topped the list, with a large volume of searches out of the US and Europe. This was followed by Malta, then by Aotearoa and Cyprus in joint third.

As air links return and bookings are made, these countries will hope that internet traffic may soon convert into tourist traffic.

New Zealand was in the mix largely thanks to the volume of searches being made out of two countries. However, one of those countries was itself.

New Zealand topped the search rankings in both Australia and at home thanks largely to strong demand for domestic travel during the past 12 months. Australia also couldn't wait to hop the Ditch, with hotels in Queenstown and trans-Tasman flights being the most searched.

Largely closed borders did not stop New Zealand from racking up an impressive 645,800 individual flight and hotel searches over the past year.

Although new horizons are opening up, domestic tourism remains important and a top consideration for Kiwi travellers.

Malta, meanwhile, leapfrogged New Zealand into second place due to its popularity as a short-haul destination from the UK, Germany and other European countries. It saw 650,300 searches.

Using Google search terms, online luggage-storage finder Bounce ranked the preferred destinations for the period of February 2021 to January 2022.

'Most popular' was defined as the top-ranked destination in the most international markets.

For overall search volume, New Zealand was ranked as 16th, thanks largely to domestic travel searches.

The Maldives was first again with an impressive 2.46 million Google searches, followed by India with 1.48 million searches, then Singapore at 1.24 million.