Marketing Secrets - Data insights through covid and beyond
Data insights from:
- Google hospitality search trends
- Google Analytics benchmarking
- Visit Britain
- Travel Weekly
- Hospitality Net
Webinar transcript
Pete:
So data insights through COVID and beyond. Actually going to start with another little video, I hope the sound quality is okay. It's not very long. And then I'll come back to the regular presentation.
Google video:
As we consider what the world could look like after the pandemic, one thing is certain, we have all changed and those changes are far from over. Thousands of Google searches across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa showed that our so-called normal continues to evolve. Different needs, different behaviors, different habits. Our daily routines have been disrupted. And we're turning to search more than ever to find everything from security in community, to new skills, and ways to stay mentally and physically healthy. Changes in our daily routines have broken our typical habit loops, making way for new habits to form. So which habits will stick?
Google video:
We've looked at the ways life has changed across the region, and what these new long-term habits are. We continue to search for knowledge. We found new ways to tackle daily tasks. We've built new skills and found ways to share our knowledge. We'll keep searching for balance, including new ways to work, better ways to unwind, and ways to stay closer to nature. And we'll keep looking for fun after social distancing measures saw us looking for occasions to celebrate remotely. New ways to eat out at home. Ways to enjoy time together, however far apart we are. Ways to cheer each other up. And new companions, along with the best ways to look after them. We've also been finding, and will continue to find, the unexpected. By staying informed on what consumers are searching for, businesses can prepare for today and tomorrow. Find your customers and be ready for what's next.
Pete:
So data insights through COVID and beyond. What that video was showing you was some information from Google search trends. So obviously, when you do a search in Google, it's capturing all the data that you're searching for and anyone could go in and then interrogate that data and see what people are searching for. And normally, it doesn't change an awful lot over time, but we have quite a few new and surprising insights that have changed in our industry. So I wanted to share some of those with you now.
Pete:
So we look back over five years for various key phrases, keywords. And the way the charts work, they're all out of 100, so it's not showing the actual number of searches, it's just normalized it all to 100. So when you can compare two, you can see which one gets more volume compared to another one. And I've marked there where the lockdown is as well.
Pete:
So this brown line is for people searching hotel break, and you can see throughout the years it's pretty steady all year, up and down, there's no particular trend as to when people search for this term. Then at lockdown, as is going to be the case for many of this data I'm going to show you, is it sort of fell off a cliff, which not too surprising, through the spring last year and recovered pretty much to the normal levels in the summer. And then went back down again in the winter and hasn't really recovered yet. This is up to the end of April this year.
Pete:
Family holidays gets much more search traffic, peaked in January 2017. The peak each year is the week after Christmas, that's when people most search for family holidays. So it peaks every year after Christmas and goes down in the winter, and then slowly rises back through the summer and quite late into the year each year. You can see on the right, there's a good peak after Christmas, then it really crashed down in March, slowly recovered. Didn't get out to the levels it had done previously. Back down again in the winter and it hasn't really recovered yet at all.
Pete:
Let me show you just a few others of these. So here's Cornwall hotel in the blue. Again, that shows a strong annual peak from just after Christmas, all the way through the summer really, and then dropping down again each winter. And as expected, that completely fell off a cliff as well in March 2020, but had a really strong recovery, double the amount of traffic there. And the similar story with Cornwall cottage. Really, really strong summer for that, and both are also looking pretty strong at the moment.
Pete:
Here's two other interesting ones. So staycation in the brown was sort of a word that we knew of, but really didn't get an awful lot of search traffic. And this last summer it just became the word, everyone knew what staycation is, and now, again, everyone's looking for staycations. Whereas weekend breaks, they're up and down, kind of fell off a cliff and then recovered fairly well last summer. It hasn't recovered so well this summer. I think Claire had something there. No?
Claire:
Pete, I was just going to say, I mean, I guess our recommendation for our audience where it's relevant is to consider the use of staycation in the breaks, in the packages, in words through the site where it's relevant. Many of you will know, and some of you might not know, but including these kind of words online on your website means that they'll be appearing in the search. They'll be found and being searched for and being more relevant than weekend breaks. And Pete, the other thing I wanted to say was for our audience, if they want to look at search trends like this that are relevant to their business then where would you direct...
Pete:
Yeah. So it does take quite a lot of research and you need to be on it, and our SEO specialists Mark and Ian, who are on the call, are on it, so they feed me these keywords. You can basically Google Google search trends and you'll come up with it. I think we can send out some links after the call. People that want to have a look, see how it works. Something that you just need to be monitoring within your industry and area. But like Claire was saying, staycation was never a thing, but all of a sudden it's now really worth potentially having a page about staycations, having an offer called staycations, really leveraging this short-term window where people are searching for these terms or even doing pay-per-click on staycations.
Claire:
I guess that could be a blog as well, Pete.
Pete:
Or a blog. Yeah, indeed. In email and a social post. Here's a couple of others. So moving tact a bit, city breaks and spa breaks. City breaks has a bit of up and down all through the year, as does spa breaks normally. Both massively impacted by lockdown obviously. Spa break did recover fairly well in the summer and went down again and has come up again a little bit. It is a bit more of a wintry topic, so it hasn't recovered really yet. And city breaks, as you would expect, hasn't recovered at all.
Pete:
Day spa and spa hotel. In the blue, spa hotel has another lovely annual trend peaking after Christmas in the winter, be a good winter trend. Dropping down in the early summer, and then going back up again towards the autumn. Fell off the cliff again in March, but had a really good recovery last summer. But is, again, quite low at the moment. Day spa, is bit stronger towards the winter most years, but hasn't really recovered yet. And spas, I think, really struggled during the first lockdown, because they were very late to reopen, weren't they?
Pete:
Take aways and afternoon tea, so here's a couple kind of foodie and different to the other ones we've seen. So take aways, pretty constant throughout the years, but actually increased at lockdown and they've sort of stayed a bit of a higher search term. Afternoon tea in the blue, the peak hit here is on Mother's Day, peaks every year on Mother's Day. Went down at lockdown, but recovered very quickly and has been up and down a little bit, but looking pretty good. And again, peaked on Mother's Day just gone.
Claire:
So Pete, a takeaway for our audience is knowing in your sector how the services change, and considering those as you consider your website in order to be current and to be relevant.
Pete:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've tried to do a whole range for different sectors. There's going to be dozens that are very specific to each individual sector, but it's given you a flavor of some of the ones. And there's lots of new ones emerge as people search for different things at the moment.
Claire:
Great, thank you.
Pete:
So the final one, bit more of a personal one, garden furniture and barbecue. So if you're looking for any garden furniture or barbecues, you're way too late, everyone bought all that last summer and they're still trying to buy it now. And I think there's one barbecue left in Peterborough. If you're quick, go and get it, but really that's just all sold out. So different type of an insight there.
Pete:
That's all from Google search trends. We're going to look at some Google Analytics data now. Many of you know us as a leading hospitality agency with hundreds of clients in this industry, so we have access to a lot of clients' Google Analytics data, and we can aggregate that and benchmark it, when it's set up correctly, to give additional insights. So I'm going to show you some more data on that now.
Pete:
So I've split the data into different property types, hopefully it covers most people on the call: large hotels, boutique, self-catering, and holiday parks. And it's all through the same date period, and indicated where the first lockdown was. So if we start on the large hotel on the top left, lockdown happened, all their visitors went away, [inaudible 00:12:57] froze, and then a steady increase back up into the summer last year, and then a steady decrease back down to November, and then going back up again now. Quite similar trend for boutique hotels, although the lag for boutique hotels was much longer last spring, took a lot longer for them to pick up their traffic.
Pete:
On the bottom left, self-catering. So slightly different pattern there, it did recover in July, but actually it's been this spring when they've been getting a lot more traffic that we've been seeing. And holiday parks, again, had a very spiky summer there and then that's tailed off. But it has come back a little bit in the spring. This is just the visitors, average visitors that we're seeing. Going to look at a bit more detail, because the other side of the coin of this is revenue taken through a website.
Pete:
So going to start with the holiday parks, and I've put quite a lot of data on this slide, so it needs a little bit of explanation. We've had to use two axes, so we're going to have the holiday park website visitors in light brown. This is weekly, back from just beginning of March last year. So this is the same data I showed just now, but in a bar chart. And then the revenue, that's the dark blue line, and you can see how it maps against visitors. So there's a lot of people going to holiday park websites last summer. And the bookings came in pretty strong, I think most would agree on the call, then tailed off into the winter as they always do anyway. And then there hasn't been so much traffic, but been plenty of bookings. And from quite early on, we've seen some of our clients promoting stays from Christmas and do really, really good sales. So their summer is looking very strong, and they've asked us to concentrate on Christmas at that moment, which is unusual to hear in May.
Pete:
This is the same information for large hotels. So their visitors went up in the summer, in the brown bars, and then it slightly decreased. The online revenue was pretty solid through the summer. And then, again, it's been pretty high through the winter, people pre-booking, getting in early.
Pete:
And a similar pattern for boutique hotels. Good recovery last summer. Not so much traffic at the moment, but still plenty of bookings coming in that we're seeing. So that's the end of the Google Analytics section. I think what's important to say is...
Claire:
Pete, just to ask. So for our guests here today, in terms of accessing this kind of data themselves, these kind of insights, you mentioned at the start of this session that for us we're all about data, and we look at Google Analytics and we set it up. But for someone who's not in that place, would they be able to access this kind of information for themselves through their own website if they have a Google Analytics account?
Pete:
So broadly, yes, Google Analytics is free and you can attach it to a website at no cost. Does need to be set up correctly, and there are online guides to help you with that. We can help with that. The difficulty is normally setting up the revenue side, tracking the booking engine. That is a little bit more complicated, but it's a one-off task. Once it's done, then you're off and flying. And highly, highly recommend doing that. If you haven't done this before, having that all set up is absolutely vital, because you can then measure your marketing activity, see how well emails and social and so on are performing, how much traffic they're driving to your website, how your website's performing, and how many people go on to make a booking. So just ties the whole marketing process end to end. And you can then work out your ROI as well if you need. So absolutely crucial bit of information that we use all the time for all of our clients.
Claire:
And Pete, as I understand, we're talking here in terms of revenue and visitors, but of course also it's possible to track the number of people clicking a certain button on a website or downloading a menu or requesting a wedding brochure. Anything online through your website is possible to track and understand how many people are doing that thing that's important.
Pete:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that does need configuration as well if you want to know that granular activity, but it's totally worthwhile. If you're a wedding venue, you might not be taking bookings online, but you'll certainly be encouraging people to download brochures, I'm sure, and watch videos. So you want to know how well your marketing is doing to drive traffic to those activities.
Claire:
Thank you.
Pete:
It's okay. So some different bits of data, here's some from VisitBritain. This just sort of sets out how much domestic hospitality there is. This is from 2019. I think these numbers are amazing, I was quite staggered. There's nearly 20 billion pounds were spent on domestic overnight trips, and that's just on 100 million domestic overnight trips. It's amazing number, isn't it? And you see there the numbers of different property types is how VisitBritain split them out. And you can see the average occupancy across all of those as well.
Pete:
And then, to compare that to that of UK outbound, so people leaving the country, currently illegal. So in 2020, UK outbound was down 73%, and this year it's predicted to be down 50%. And more specifically, long-haul was down 80% last year, and is expected to be down 64% this year. And travel, we think, won't return to pre-pandemic levels till 2024. So what I think that means is there's going to be even more people in the UK added to that nearly 100 million overnight stays. I think there'll be much, much more demand there.
Pete:
There's good evidence that the domestic rebound was pretty strong. So last year when we were in lockdown in April, domestic tourism was down 93%, not too surprising. But when we were out of lockdown in July, it only dropped down by 22%, so a pretty good recovery I think. People like Hanna were able to get to the pub.
Pete:
Another data source that we've been using all through the lockdown, and this is fantastic, I've only taken out a few snapshots from it. Again, via VisitBritain and a research agency called BVA, it's a customer sentiment tracker. And they've been surveying 1,200 consumers every month. There's many questions they've been asking each month, so you can really track how people are feeling and what they're thinking. And then they throw in various other questions as well. But I suppose a couple of highlights for us on the screen there, so there's lots of people still planning or thinking about having a domestic trip, want to have a domestic trip, but they haven't planned it or booked it yet for this year. And they're also expecting bookings to come in much later, so much shorter booking window.
Pete:
So the numbers behind that, 35% of the UK are expecting to take an overnight trip, and 75% haven't planned that yet, and 81% haven't booked that yet. So there is still tons of demand coming I would say. 81% of people not yet booked their trips. And that's from the April sentiment tracker, and just the one that published this week. We also did a bit of survey about contactless hotels, so that's people using their mobile to check in and open their rooms with a mobile, and checkout and order food and drink and so on and room service from apps. So there's quite a lot of detail behind the data. The headline was 57% are happy with contactless. It did vary quite a lot on different ages, so you can go back and see the ages. Not surprisingly, the younger audience were more happy with it. If that's something that you're considering, then it seems quite sensible.
Pete:
Just to show you the chart version of what I just said. So those who are going to take a UK summer stay, 75% haven't planned that yet, big arrow there. 81% haven't booked it. And yeah, 77% is the new bookings, that's not moved from last year. That you can also see the data there for spring bookings, which was just coming to an end too. That's that part.
Pete:
And then the final one, they also asked what kind of accommodation people are looking for. And you could pick multiple types, so it's fairly evenly spread across self-catering, holiday parks, hotels, and private houses. So lots of people, I would say, are going to be looking for accommodation across lots of different properties, booking it quite late, haven't booked it yet. That's the summary of that.
Pete:
So lots of data there. We can share links if you want more of the data behind some of those, but we're going to go to questions if there's any questions.
Clara:
Haven't got any questions at the moment, so pop your questions in the chat box now if you've got anything to ask. Just a couple of comments there from Robin Barker saying, "Leaving the country's not quite illegal, but very difficult. Tomorrow's news is likely to change that, demand is huge." But then Lynn Martin also saying, "That with carbon reduction targets, that we'd hope to never return to pre-pandemic long-haul numbers." So interesting point.
Pete:
Yeah. I don't know how that's going to balance out isn't it, because it's down to the individual, isn't it? My kids have never been out of Europe and they'd love to go out of Europe, but it's all on your conscience, isn't it now?