Are fewer people traveling? Or are fewer people using search to find hotels? The chart below shows a significant decline over time of queries related to hotels and accommodations in the US. Sure, our economy might explain a little bit of it. But the decline was already underway in 2004, which is as far back as the Google data will go.

Compare this with the growth of restaurant related queries over time:

So hotel searches are tanking and restaurant searches are growing. What does this mean? Stay tuned for (hopefully) some insights into, well, Google’s Insights for search.