An Online Journey: Tourism Stats

Article co written by Chandrè Reddy and Naazneen Parkar

One of the qualities that makes the tourism industry so interesting and exciting to follow is its multi-faceted nature. When analysing the performance for the entire year, we thought what better way to classify the data than according to the various divisions within the tourism industry.

We broke the conversation down according to frequent day-to-day tourist activities such as transport; more regulated happenings such as recreational undertakings; the very seasonal data such as hotels and resorts; lastly the once-off occassions such as events.

This analysis allows us to identify opportunities and threats, as well as make recommendations going forward on how this information can benefit the respective target markets.

• Recreational and Luxury Brands: The Power of Influence

A key metric for luxury and recreational brands to focus on is the level of influential conversation. The trend identified was some what to the contrary, in which only 42.2% came from credible sources. This tells us that not many credible people were talking about the brand and it could also be an indication that people with money don’t necessarily have high influence online. This is also seen in the banking sector where the high earners typically aren't social influencers (yet).

Considering that luxury and recreational brands target high-end consumers, in order to increase loyalty and drive greater reach it is important to target the more influential of marketing channels. This presents an opportunity to encourage more credible people to get on board with your brand who have great influence within their communities.

• Transport: Price is Key

With the transport industry, a key metric to focus on would be sentiment towards these services, which is important since commuters use them on a day-to-day basis. Depending on your target market, it may be critical to maintain a high standard of service to be able to retain commuters.

It was interesting to see in the last year that approximately 20% of the conversation about transport was positive. Good service is one of the key factors that commuters look for with 8.1% of the highly positive conversation even praising this aspect.

Another important factor in the transport industry is pricing. It was noted that 7.5% of the total conversation was related to pricing. 1 in 8 of these conversations were negative, indicating the packaging and pricing of transport products is very important. Here, we can see that an opportunity exists to introduce more value-added services which will serve as a justification for the given pricing packages.

• Hotels and Resorts : Seasonal Tides

The hotel and resort industry has distinct spikes and troughs of conversation volumes within the year. These can be broken down into the more distinct peak holiday periods as compared to off-season. Tourism is highly dependent on holidays and specific seasons - that said, it's not as clear cut as would be expected. With 18.7% of the annual conversation having occurred during the December-January holiday period, amounting to an average of 9.35% for these two months. Easter and April contributed to 8.76% of the conversation which surprisingly only denotes a relatively typical month for the conversation (having expected much more for this period). June to August generated 31.4% of the total conversation, equating to an average of 10.46% for these three months. This shows that in terms of conversation volumes, the top two holiday periods provide the best opportunities for hotel and resort brands to maximise their online returns.

•  Events: Time To Engage

With Once-off tourism activities such as events and concerts, the sense of community and engagement are key factors in building up hype and excitement. Social media contributes to a great portion of this conversation, with 63.9% coming from Twitter alone. The level of engagement during concerts and events are also high with 30.9% of the conversation being Re-tweeted.

Destinations have high talkability and therefore brands should lever this opportunity to get more out by engaging in the conversation. Furthermore the use of peer-referral is encouraged as it is extremely powerful in driving new customers – we’re more likely to try out a new place if a friend has recommended it first.

The tourism industry presents great opportunities to use creativity in such a manner that everyone benefits. By keeping abreast of trends, whether they are seasonal, once-off or long term, we can identify when there is a need to drive campaigns. These campaigns will help to reap the benefits of seasonal volumes, increase engagement within communities, alter existing brands to offer more attractive products and services and encourage more credible people to converse about brands within the tourism industry to ensure the success of the power of influence.