Sojern today (13 May) launched a new interactive dashboard providing real-time Covid-19 travel insights to help hotels, attractions, and tourism boards understand travel behaviour and plan for recovery.
In a statement announcing the introduction of the dashboard, Sojern said the insights are collated from analysis of travel intent data from its airline and hotel partner worldwide. They provide a view of travel demand by looking at online traveller path to purchase, and “empower its customers, partners and industry leaders to forecast travel demand and make informed decisions about market recovery.”
The dashboard, updated daily at 10.30pm UTC, provides market-level details on future searching and booking trends indexed to pre-Covid levels to provide visibility into timing for a recovery in specific destinations.
“Travel providers can use these insights to help determine when to re-open or when to accelerate marketing to power recovery. Dashboard users will also be able to compare different regions to see when travel is likely to recover in each market,” it added.
From today, Sojern is providing the public “free and unlimited access” to the insights via the company’s website. Previously, this service was only provided to its customers and partners.
On the decision to make the dashboard public, Sojern explained it was due to the popularity generated by its travel dataset, as people are looking for real-time travel data to help them better understand the impact coronavirus is having on the global economy.
On the daily updates, Sojern’s director of Travel Insights Amber Kuo explained: .“Normally, weekly or even monthly data updates about how consumers are travelling would be acceptable to inform marketing campaigns. However, in Covid times travel marketers are feeling stressed and uncertain about the future. Providing daily updates gives marketers more control because they can see how the situation is evolving, and when is the right”.
Snapshots: Trends and insights of coronavirus impact on travel to Asia Pacific (APAC):
Since the last edition of the Covid-19 APAC Insights Sojern has observed trends that include signs of positive momentum in domestic travel across APAC; highlights specific months to expect an uptick in travel; what is happening in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan. (These insights are based on data collected on 4 May 2020).
APAC experienced about 40% decrease in search from March
Following the declaration by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that Covid-19 was officially a pandemic, from 12 March onwards APAC saw a 40% decrease in search volume. Individual countries within the region saw a further decrease in search intent as stricter travel restrictions came into play.
Positive momentum in domestic travel in China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan
Mainland China’s outbound travel started to decline last December, but it has since reached a plateau. Trends show that domestic travel took a sharp drop in mid-January when China imposed a lockdown, but continues to improve since mid-February showing positive upticks. With the slowing down of infected cases, travellers are on the move again with a whopping 115 million Chinese consumers visiting domestic destinations over the Labour (May) Day holiday (1-5 May). Shanghai Disneyland also reopened on 11 May, ending a three-month closure. to a reduced number of visitors.
Hong Kong’s domestic travel was on a decline, but is showing clear signs of recovery since mid-February. Its outbound travel declined until the end of January, but has started to show signs of recovery at the end of April. This uptick is coming from Hong Kong to China specifically.
South Korean domestic and outbound travel has seen a general decline since mid-December, but there was a slight improvement in April. Following positive news of containment of the virus, over the weekend South Korea warned of a second wave of cases as a new cluster formed around a number of nightclubs. Since then, the capital Seoul shut down all nightclubs, bars, and discos.
Taiwan’s domestic travel has a slower decline than average and shows signs of recovery in the second week of April. Additionally, the country’s outbound has been on a decline since mid-January, but has reached a plateau. Over the weekend Taiwan announced it did not have a single local transmission in 28 days. This could reflect positively on travel trends in the near future.
February 2021 has the highest search volume in the last 28 days across Asia
Flight data and flight searches conducted in the last 28 days showed travellers are searching and dreaming of a destination during some specific months ahead. February 2021 has the highest search volume intent. This could be due to the Chinese Lunar New Year, and that travellers are looking for potential destinations to visit. Additionally, there is high search volume for this September and November, and this could be due to the mid-Autumn Festival in China – just four months away.
• Read the full Travel Insight report here (PDF): Covid-19 APAC Insights
• Featured image credit: ababil12/Getty Images
