U.S. travel habits: Where people wanted to go and where they really went

Among the top U.S. destinations in the first quarter, New York City was first, and twice as many travelers experienced the Big Apple than its surprise and closest rival, Phoenix.

That's according to a new study of search and transaction data from Sojern, a San Francisco-based company that offers a platform to enhance customer conversion and loyalty.

Sojern says its analysis of 400 million traveler data points from partner companies' searches and transactions found that the most popular U.S. destinations in the first three months of 2013 were New York City, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Altanta and Washington, D.C.

These top-five status of these most-visited cities seem to show the power of business travel because the most-searched destinations in the first quarter produced a different ranking, namely New York City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Orlando, and this collection has more of a leisure-travel flair.

In fact, Sojern found that 56.8% of travelers took trips during the first quarter for business travel while 43.2% traveled for leisure purposes. The incidence of business trips increased 4% from the first quarter of 2012.

Among other highlights:

• The most popular business travel destinations were Atlanta; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; Seattle, and New York City, Sojern found.

•  Some 58.46% of travelers were males, and 41.54% were females.

• Nearly 5% of travelers flew first class while about 95% traveled in coach.