Tourism Recovery Trackers Roundup

 
Brian Nicholson

When you want to know what’s happening in travel, these are some of the top resources to turn to. If you have a great one that we should consider adding to the list, email us at hello@blend.travel.

Most of the reports mentioned here have multiple visualizations, and many offer filtering. This post is simply a launchpad; we encourage you to explore each of the reports in depth to identify what’s most useful to you.

Images were last updated in October and November 2020, and are not an accurate representation of current data.

Transportation

Search Trends

Other Tourism Trends Data and Reports

Transportation Trends

See where people are traveling now, or where they’re planning to travel in the near future, by plane or car.

Kayak Flight Search Trends

kayak.com/flight-trends Link opens in new tab | Updated Weekly

Kayak’s report shows you the year-over-year change in flight search demand by week, by destination city.

Table showing week-by-week change in flight search demand, by destination city.

TSA Passenger Throughput Report

blend.travel/tsa Link opens in new tab | Updated Daily

The Transportation Security Administration publishes the raw passenger checkpoint data each day at https://www.tsa.gov/coronavirus/passenger-throughput. We chart that data at blend.travel/tsa.

Timeline chart showing total traveler throughput this year vs. last year.

Arrivalist Daily Travel Index (Driving)

arrivalist.com/daily-travel-index Link opens in new tab | Updated Daily

Arrivalist’s uses GPS data to show “US travelers who moved at least 50 miles from home and spent a minimum of 2 hours on their journey.” They offer multiple visualizations and a good explanation of how to read the data.

US state heatmap showing year-over-year growth or decline of drive trips.

Sojern’s COVID-19 Travel Data Insights (Flights)

sojern.com/covid-19-insights Link opens in new tab | Updated Daily

Sojern offers not only search and booking data, but also Share of Future Search Volume and Share of Future Booking Volume. It’s one of the few reports with projections.

Timeline charts and tables showing year-over-year change in share of future search volume and share of future booking volume.

Phocuswright’s Global Air Trends – September 2020

https://www.phocuswright.com/…/Global-Air-Trends-September-2020 Link opens in new tab | Published October 2020

This air trends report includes search data by country, but also airline seat capacity. If this report continues to be published monthly, you’ll find it at https://www.phocuswright.com/Travel-Research/.

A column chart showing year-over-year change in air searches by month, by country in the APAC region.

Search Trends

You can learn a lot about current demand by tapping into Google’s vast database of query data. Unlike some of the other reports mentioned here, this data does not specifically indicate what destination people are researching, nor does it show booking data. However, it’s flexible enough that you can use it for virtually any term, making it invaluable in your research.

Tourism Search Trends Report

blend.travel/trends Link opens in new tab | Updated Weekly

We created this report from Google Trends data because Google Trends doesn’t yet offer a year-over-year visualization of search demand. We collected nearly 40 tourism-related terms such as “hotels,” “zipline,” “rafting,” and “food tour” to provide a single-page view of the shift in demand. It’s organized roughly by things-to-do categories that TripAdvisor uses, and allows you to specify a country.

Tourism Search Trends Tool

blend.travel/mytrends Link opens in new tab | Updated Weekly

This is similar to our search trends report, and again pulls from the Google Trends database to show a year-over-year comparison of search volume. The difference is that you can specify any search term you’d like.

Google Trends

trends.google.com Link opens in new tab | Updated Hourly*

Google’s own tool offers robust functionality such as metro-level drill-down, related topics, and direct comparison of search volume for up to 5 terms at once. This allows tour operators to understand demand in their region.

* While recent data is available on an hourly basis, historical data is shown in week intervals.

Search Console

search.google.com/search-console Link opens in new tab | Updated Daily

Google Search Console is a tool you need to be using to check on the health of your website, and it can also be used to see how often your site is being displayed for certain queries, and how many clicks you’re getting from those impressions. That functionality is like a limited version of Google Trends, tailored to your website.

Other Tourism Trend Data

Travel Insights With Google

travelinsights.withgoogle.com Link opens in new tab | Updated Frequently

Google’s new Travel Insights offers 2 free tools.

Destination Insights (shown here) shows where the demand is for your region, where that demand is coming from, and how much it’s growing or shrinking. You can segment by domestic and/or international trips, and you can view air and/or accommodations information.

Hotel Insights (not pictured) is rolling out data as it becomes available as destinations re-open for travel. It shows hotel demand from inbound markets, and includes a map view that shows top current demand, as well as how that demand compares to prior years. It looks like a great way to determine where to shift dollars, especially during times of travel volatility.

The main drawback of this tool vs. some others, is that Google appears to be providing data only from recent weeks, and not upcoming weeks. It may be best to combine these insights with insights from other tools that are showing demand for upcoming periods.

Sojern’s COVID-19 Travel Data Insights (Hotels)

sojern.com/covid-19-insights Link opens in new tab | Updated Daily

We mentioned Sojern’s report earlier for flight data, but the same report also offers hotel data—both search data AND booking data. Multiple regions and reports are available.

A time series line chart showing change in hotel volume by European countries.

UNWTO Tourism Recovery Tracker (& More)

unwto.org/unwto-tourism-recovery-tracker Link opens in new tab | Updated Monthly

The UN World Tourism Organization produces this helpful interactive dashboard that includes occupancy rates, hotel searches and bookings, seat capacity, and more. There are multiple pages of data in this report alone, but they offer additional reports at https://www.unwto.org/unwto-tourism-dashboard.

Trekksoft Travel Trend Report

trekksoft.com/en/resources/learning-center/travel-trends Link opens in new tab | Published Annually

Trekksoft sources data from “our own research as well as interviews with experts” for their annual report. Their 2020/21 report is free with signup, and was developed in partnership with Arival.

U.S. Travel Association COVID-19 Research

ustravel.org/toolkit/covid-19-travel-industry-research Link opens in new tab | Updated Weekly

If you serve the US market, this toolkit from the U.S. Travel Association needs to be on your weekly reading list. It has a great weekly rundown of the data from various sources. They also make this weekly travel spending report available.

U.S. Travel Association Travel Forecasts

ustravel.org/research/travel-forecasts Link opens in new tab | Published Semi-Annually

While a portion of this report requires a paid membership, the forecast table (the same data used to create this chart) is available free, and can be useful in projecting revenue recovery for US-based tourism companies.

U.S. Travel Association Travel Trends Index (Paid)

ustravel.org/research/travel-trends-index Link opens in new tab | Updated Monthly

The Travel Trends Index (TTI) “measures the direction and pace of travel volume to and within the United States.” While accessing the monthly TTI require a subscription, the latest summary report is available free.

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About The Author

Brian Nicholson

Brian is a partner at Blend Marketing. He focuses on brand strategy, positioning, and analytics for the tourism industry.

Email Brian

About The Author

Brian Nicholson

Brian is a partner at Blend Marketing. He focuses on brand strategy, positioning, and analytics for the tourism industry.