WTTC Launches Interactive COVID19 Travel Demand Recovery Dashboard

The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) has launched a dashboard highlighting the recovery of travel demand across flights and hotels, as well as revealing the shifting intentions of travellers through online travel searches.

The Interactive COVID19 Travel Demand Recovery Dashboard, updated on a fortnightly basis, was developed by WTTC with support from McKinsey & Company.

Free to all WTTC Members and non-members, the Dashboard presents two distinct views based on Google trends and searches, and bookings via WTTC’s research partners in the project.

The first is via Google Trends, where all the data sourced has been organised into easy-to-understand holiday or trip segments, Adventure, Culture, Urban, Family, Sun & Beach and Travel Services.

Each segmentation has been devised using a set of 20 keywords, covering popular activities, sites and destinations. The segments provide insights at both the regional level and for key countries, such as the UK, the US, France and Brazil.

The second comes via regional insights through bi-monthly updates on movements and bookings, with flight information from WTTC’s research partner ForwardKeys, hotel occupancy and average daily room rates from STR and the Google Mobility Index, which shows local recreational activity.

In addition, Global Rescue, a leader in medical, security, travel risk and crisis management, provides data showing how ‘open’ each country or key market is, in the context of travel restrictions imposed to combat coronavirus.

The dashboard shows that while search for travel interest is still lower than last year, Europe is leading the recovery with search now just 20% down on last year. However, adventure is the fastest recovering search segment globally, at just 10% down on last year, versus 40% for other segments such as urban, sun and beach, family, culture etc.

In a number of countries such as France and Germany, adventure travel searches are 50-70% above 2019 levels.

“We have created a unique dashboard featuring qualitative and quantitative data to provide the insights which could be crucial to help the travel and tourism sector re-start and map out the path to its recovery,” said Gloria Guevara, WTTC President & CEO. “Our dashboard will enable decision makers to track the impact of public policies by monitoring the positive and negative fluctuations of flight and hotel bookings and also online travel searches, as well as consumer confidence. Data is essential for businesses, government and other organisations to make informed choices and drive the policy which will revive a sector that has suffered disproportionally due to the pandemic. With one in four jobs new jobs being generated by the travel and tourism sector in the last five years, it’s more important than ever that easy access to data on a regional and global level help inform the right choices at the right time.”

According to WTTC’s 2020 Economic Impact Report, during 2019, travel and tourism was responsible for one in 10 jobs (330 million total), making a 10.3% contribution to global GDP and generating one in four of all new jobs.

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