The majority of travel searches made via mobile devices in Europe were from Cyprus, Iceland-based flight search engine Dohop has found.

Using over 500,000 data points, Dohop recently compiled a report that compared the mobile usage of European visitors to both Dohop and affiliate sites in the first two weeks of 2016 against the same period the previous year.

In Cyprus 67 per cent (43 per cent in 2015) of all visits came from smartphones or tablets, a big jump from Germany which is second on the list at 48.3 per cent (38 per cent in 2015). Lagging the Europeans is Hungary with the lowest ratio of mobile visitors; just 24 per cent of travellers there use their mobile devices to search for flights.

Dohop has no data on the residency of people searching its sites, but as around 50 per cent of visits are to locally branded sites using its affiliate programme there is clear local insight.

“We know, for example, that these people in Cyprus are accessing a local website to search for flights, hotels or rental cars,” Johann Thorsson, marketing manager of Dohop said.

Overall the use of the mobile devices is growing – in 2016, 37 per cent of users searched for flights via these devices versus 31 per cent last year.

Tablet use has remained stable at 11.7 per cent and the desktop is losing ground to the smartphone. In 2014, 11 per cent of visits came from tablets, up from 8 per cent in 2013. By contrast, smartphone use rose from 5 per cent in 2013 to 25 per cent in 2016.