WTTC tracks travel demand

 

WTTC has launched an in-depth data dashboard highlighting the recovery of travel demand across flights and hotels, as well as revealing the shifting intentions of travellers through online travel searches, so as to help the travel and tourism sector map out its road to recovery.

Developed in partnership with consulting firm McKinsey & Company, the interactive Covid-19 Travel Demand Recovery Dashboard provides users with easy access to qualitative and quantitative travel data at the global and regional level as well as for 33 major countries around the world.

The tool tracks travel demand since the beginning of the year, and will be updated on a fortnightly basis. It offers a useful way to navigate through a sea of data reflecting changing travel demand around the world, as countries start to gradually ease travel restrictions and reopen borders.

Free to all WTTC members and non-members, the dashboard presents two distinct views based on Google trends and searches, and bookings via WTTC’s research partners in the project.

Gloria Guevara, WTTC president and CEO, said: “Our dashboard will enable decision makers to track the impact of public policies by monitoring the positive and negative fluctuations of flight and hotel bookings and also online travel searches, as well as consumer confidence.

“Data is essential for businesses, government and other organisations to make informed choices and drive the policy which will revive a sector that has suffered disproportionally due to the pandemic.

The new data dashboard offers insights through two main avenues.

The first is via Google Trends, where all the data sourced has been organised into holiday or trip segments: Adventure, Culture, Urban, Family, Sun & Beach, and Travel Services.

Each segmentation has been devised using a set of 20 keywords, covering popular activities, sites and destinations. The segments provide insights at both the regional level and for key travel and tourism countries, such as the UK, the US, France and Brazil.

The second comes via regional insights through bi-monthly updates on movements and bookings, with flight information from travel analytics company ForwardKeys, as well as hotel occupancy and average daily room rates from research firm STR and the Google Mobility Index, which shows local recreational activity.

In addition, Global Rescue, which offers medical, security, travel risk, and crisis management services, provides data showing the ‘openness’ of each country or key market, in the context of Covid-induced travel restrictions.

As an example, the dashboard shows that while travel search interest is still lower than last year, Europe is leading the recovery with searches now just 20 per cent down from last year. Adventure is the fastest recovering search segment globally, at just 10 per cent down from last year, versus 40 per cent for other segments such as urban, sun and beach, family, and culture.

In a number of countries such as France and Germany, adventure travel searches are 50-70 per cent above 2019 levels.

-TTG Asia.