There is no mistaking the signs in APAC. With 75% of people keen to travel as much as possible in the near future1 and search interest in travel-related terms like “hotel” rising by 60% in Singapore,2 travel is clearly in hot demand. For the upcoming summer holiday boom, however, your travel brand will need more than just these broad signals to deliver sizzling business results.
What you need is the latest information — at your fingertips — on where travel demand is peaking and which destinations are showing fast-growing interest. This lets you deliver timely, relevant travel offerings to optimise your campaigns and maximise bookings.
Based on our analysis of APAC travel trends, we’ve identified the latest list of top five destinations for inbound and outbound travel. The most searched APAC destinations by travellers worldwide made the list for inbound interest, while the places most frequently ranked a top destination by travellers from APAC made the list for outbound interest.
And these are the top five destinations that have seen the highest demand growth.
These lists, however, may change with time since interest in a travel destination can be influenced by TV shows, viral pop culture moments, social media trends, and mega events.
For instance, when the hit American drama “White Lotus” was airing, searches for the hotel in Hawaii where the first season was filmed rose by 120% from six months prior. And after its second season aired, searches for the hotel in Italy where the season was filmed soared by 28X as compared with six months before.3
To fully unlock the business potential of the travel boom, you need timely insights on travel demand and interest. This information helps you meet travellers in their moments of need with the hotels, flights, or activities you provide and promote.
An easy, timely way to keep up with travel demand and interest
Google’s Destination Insights is a free, publicly available online tool that lets you keep up with the latest travel demand and stay ahead of the curve.
With Destination Insights, you can easily identify markets with growth potential and create campaigns to win traveller preference.
Drawing on Search data from as recent as five days ago, Destination Insights provides a view of top inbound and outbound destinations in every market. You can also use it to zoom into interest and demand for specific cities, states and regions important to your business and marketing strategy.
This information is timely and invaluable because with it, you can create campaigns to win the attention and preference of APAC travellers during the critical period when they are weighing their travel options and open to trying new brands. They spend on average 28 days in the “dream” phase and 24 days in the “plan” phase of their travel purchase journeys. And in the process, they’re considering some five to six brands when deciding on things like flights and accommodation, with nearly 1 in 4 making bookings on platforms they haven’t used before.4
How to make sharper business decisions with Destination Insights
Using the latest information on destinations that are currently in demand, or show the highest growth in demand, you can refine your campaign to be more relevant to travellers. Add these trending places to your campaign if they aren’t already included, and target ads to these specific geographic locations. You can also use the destination insights to test your campaign in multiple new and relevant geographies, and find valuable customers.
Singapore Airlines, for example, used insights on geographic demand to determine which markets it should prioritise when it expanded the rollout of a campaign using value based bidding with data-driven attribution. The optimisation resulted in a 46% increase in traffic on its website and a 26% increase in conversions.
Singapore Airlines used insights on geographic demand to optimise its campaign
You can also optimise your business with Google’s Destination Insights by updating the creatives in your campaigns to match travellers’ interest and demand. Tailoring the visuals and messages in this way can help you drive conversion among those in the “plan” and “book” phases of their travel journeys.
In particular, the creatives in your video campaigns should be refreshed to cater to shifts in demand and interest. The reason: More than half of those surveyed say they turn to video touchpoints in their travel journeys, and notably, 41% turn to YouTube specifically.5
The changes you make to your creatives in Video action campaigns, for example, will cascade across YouTube and other Google video partner platforms where the campaign is run. This helps your brand be relevant, at scale, to people in various phases of the travel journey, and drive conversions at the lowest cost per action.
Given APAC’s growing appetite for travel, the time is now for travel brands to shine. By keeping a firm finger on the pulse of traveller demand and interest, you’ll be able to identify and maximise opportunities for business growth, and help your travel brand soar high this summer.
Discover the latest travel trends on Destination Insights and raise the bar on marketing for tourism.
Contributor: Ceren Koca, Principal Strategy & Insights Lead
