GOOGLE is leveraging the power of its search data to launch today Travel Insights with Google, two free real-time tools to help destinations and hoteliers understand live demand patterns and respond in an informed and tactical manner to customers.
Destination Insights and Hotel Insights are being launched in Asia Pacific first for two reasons, said Hermione Joye, head of travel for Google APAC. One, “we are seeing stronger recovery in APAC. As borders and bubbles start to open, and people go into Christmas and Chinese New Year, we wanted to get this data out to market in a safe manner so that governments and industry can make informed decisions.”
Two, “we didn’t want to make global launches in Europe and the US because we want to be sensitive to what’s going on there,” she said, adding that “safe travel” is topmost in its mind.
The Singapore-based executive was speaking to WiT from Sydney where she was on her seventh day of quarantine.
Asked to describe her personal experience on travelling at this time, she said, “I was super surprised by how safe I felt, the extraordinary measures in Singapore were mind blowing. I was travelling with three kids under three, I was nervous but I was impressed by the great lengths the airline (Singapore Airlines) went to, to make us feel safe and comfortable.
“It felt normal but with fewer people. The airline gave us special packs, including masks, food was pre-booked and delivered to your seat. There was limited exposure but the crew was still helpful and had smiles on their faces (behind the masks).
“In Sydney, I did my Covid test and if we didn’t have to do quarantine, we’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
Joye said the new tools for destinations and hotels were developed, following the positive response to its Flight Demand Explorer, launched earlier this year and made available to its commercial partners. The difference is, these tools are available free to anyone who wishes to understand real-time customer demand and capture it.
“We had positive feedback from airlines to the Flight Demand Explorer and saw an overall need to create a one-stop shop for travel insights,” said Joye.
Within the “shop” will sit its Travel Analytics Centre (available only to commercial partners) and the two public tools – Destination Insights and Hotel Insights.
“Destination Insights is focused on helping businesses, governments and tourism bodies understand what’s happening in their market and sharing data on how consumers are changing, and adapt with it,” said Joye.
It allows you to look at overall travel demand from any country globally, top sources as well as top destinations. Tourism boards, which had been granted early access, have responded favourably.
“The Destination Insights Tool will be an easy and useful tool for tourism stakeholders to better understand travel trends and consumer demands in a timely manner. We hope that this will empower more data-driven business decisions and fuel innovation, so as to enable businesses to reimagine their offerings and emerge stronger,” said Lynette Pang, Assistant Chief Executive, Marketing Group, Singapore Tourism Board.
A spokesperson from Taiwan Tourism Bureau said, “By using these tools to better understand global trends among countries, we are able to utilise more granular travel demand data to help inform our tourism strategy.”
The Hotel Insights tool is made for the longer tail, exposing data for demand for hotels in specific areas. “This will allow mom-and-pop B&Bs to get more granular data on how demand is changing and adapt their operations,” said Joye.
The data allows businesses to go hyper-local which is a necessity at this time as well as have a global view on trends. For example, it was interesting to see that searching for Australia domestic trends, Broome was the most searched-for destination and in terms of where the pent-up demand was strongest? New South Wales, followed by Queensland.
“Our survey shows one in two people in APAC want to travel, and demand is peaking. With this tool you can see who’s searching for, say, Indonesia and what Vietnamese are searching for. And if your destination is in the negative range, then perhaps you may want to do something about it to remind people about you,” said Joye.
For example, looking at who’s searching for Indonesia in recent weeks, the tool shows the three top source countries are the US, followed by India and the UK. And in terms of top destination searched for, no surprise, it is almost entirely Denpasar (Bali) – which goes to show, Covid or no Covid, nothing’s changed.
Asked if this Covid-inspired tool would last past the pandemic, Joye said, “We always build with the hope that things will last as long as they are relevant. We will continue to support it as long as there is demand to use it, and we will evolve it over time.”
Joye said the two tools were designed to be easy to use and to be accessible to everyone. “We’d love to be the go-to spot for a general dipstick for travel demand, to be the first starting point and if people want to dig further, they can go to other sites. We want it to be a helpful tool that people use all the time.”
She acknowledges there’s “noise” out there in terms of lots of companies providing travel data and insights but said, “This is a living tool, with live data. It’s meant to make people independent in how they use it.”