Sojern: COVID-19: Insights On Travel Impact, Asia Pacific - January
14th January, 2021 -With our access to real-time traveller audiences and unmatched visibility into global travel demand, we’re in a unique position to share the current travel trends at the forefront of marketers’ minds. In this blog series, we’ll take a look at the data in order to aid travel marketers in their assessment of this worldwide event. They can use these trends to inform their marketing strategies during this period, as the industry stabilises.
These insights are based on data collected on 12 January, 2021. We are reviewing our data on a regular basis in order to provide an accurate view of trends and patterns in consumer behaviour. Sojern's insights are based on over 350 million traveller profiles and billions of travel intent signals, however it does not capture one hundred percent of the travel market.
Upcoming Travel Trends for Asia Pacific and Lunar New Year
Domestic travel will lead the way during the upcoming Lunar New Year (LNY/Chinese New Year) period. We analysed the travel trends and insights looking at countries within Asia Pacific (APAC) that typically have the strongest Lunar New Year seasonality - Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia and Hong Kong.
What we found is that the demand for travel is predominantly domestically driven, with the exception of Hong Kong where more than 50% are looking at exploring international travel - if it translates into actual bookings will depend on the status of travel restrictions. The dates of travel are between 11th - 14th February coinciding with the LNY dates. At least 40% of travellers started to search a month prior to LNY with the exceptions of Japan, Thailand and Malaysia - all of which are seeing a surge in COVID-19 cases with lockdowns and state of emergencies having been declared. In Hong Kong, more than 10% of travellers are looking to book trips of at least four days. Travel marketers should be planning to target APAC travellers now, and again two weeks prior to LNY to capitalise on the demand.
Inter-country travel between Hong Kong and Singapore is showing a peak in demand between LNY (Feb 2021) and the March 2021 school holidays. (Reference Chart 1 below).
When looking at Singapore’s domestic trends, we see that pre-planning has started for LNY, Valentine’s Day and the March school holidays. Our data shows that the domestic hotel search demand has improved drastically with a 73% year-over-year (YoY) uplift (Reference Chart 2 below). It will be interesting to keep an eye on the future international travel intent to Singapore with the announcement that World Economic Forum's (WEF) 2021 will be taking place in May in Singapore as opposed to Davos-Klosters, Switzerland.
Chart 1 - Hong Kong Inbound flight searches from Singapore