Golden Week, a collection of four national holidays within seven days, is one of Japan’s busiest holiday seasons. This year it did not fall on a weekend since 2011, instead they were on a Friday (April 29) and Tuesday to Thursday (May 3-5).
Sojern, a leading provider of a data-driven traveller marketing platform, looked at the flight patterns and their shifts to reveal how travel trends have changed among Japanese holiday-makers during Golden Week.
Top destinations
For 2015’s Golden Week the top countries visited included US, South Korea, Japan, China, and Hong Kong. For this year they were US, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and China.
New York is a popular destination for Japanese travellers. (Image credit: williams87/iStock)
Before Golden Week the top five spots were US, Japan, China, Hong Kong, and South Korea – an indication of which destinations would peak in popularity for the holiday season, according to Sojern.
In 2015 the top cities were Seoul, Hong Kong, and Los Angeles. This year, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Dallas took the top spots. Seoul dropped to fifth spot and Hong Kong to sixth.
Despite the holidays not including a weekend this year, long-haul travel still dominated with the top cities visited mainly in the US. Data showed that 40% of the top cities were in the US, and these included Chicago and New York City.
More group travel
2016 saw an increase in couples and parties of three or more – the latter likely families as May 5 is Children’s Day.
The travel pattern was also different than during the ‘normal’ periods (before Golden Week). 19% of the travellers were in groups of two, while and 75% travelled solo. Golden Week seems to inspire more couple and family travel because of the increase in group travel in both 2015 and 2016.
Shorter trips
Without the weekend for Golden Week this year travellers took shorter trips compared to 2015, as illstrated in the chart below:
Sojern noted that as this year’s Golden Week fell at a different time than last year’s there was a marked change in travel trends.
“Seeing these trends is only one piece of the puzzle, you also need to integrate this data into your marketing efforts,” it added.
Sojern suggested that marketers do the following to tap into the Japanese market during Golden Week:
- Create offers that appeal to your target traveller. For example, next year Golden Week falls on a weekend. Using 2016 data to predict and create deals for travellers might not be the most effective. Instead understanding 2015’s trends will be more helpful. There will likely be longer trips than this year, so promotons for longer stays will be more effective then.
- Long haul and US trips are on everyone’s radar, so if you are a US travel marketer you know your marketing budget would be well spent on Global Week travellers for 2017.
- With peak searching and booking happening at the end of April, and with most of the travel being regional you can time your ads accordingly.
