From May 2020 to September 2021, PR Central published Radar Turístico, a monthly study of how Mexicans’ travel intentions and the travel industry’s outlook were changing during the pandemic. It combined Google search data, industry surveys and social listening, and it won a Gold SABRE Award in 2020 in the Travel & Leisure category.
| Project type | Proprietary tourism market intelligence study |
|---|---|
| Period | May 2020 to September 2021, 11 editions |
| Partners | OGHEN Consulting and STA Consultores |
| Recognition | Gold SABRE Award, SABRE Awards Latin America 2020, Travel & Leisure category |
Why was Radar Turístico created?
In April 2020, hotel occupancy in Mexico fell to 7.4%, compared with 62.5% in April 2019, according to Smith Travel Research. Passenger traffic fell 91.5% at GAP’s airports, 95.7% at ASUR’s airports in Mexico and 92.8% at OMA’s, compared with April 2019. Hotels, travel agencies and destinations needed to know when Mexicans would travel again and what to tell them in the meantime, and no source was measuring it month by month.
How did it work?
Each edition used a traffic light —green, amber or red— to rate the stages of the travel purchase journey: dreaming about a trip, searching for domestic and international destinations, the relationship with travel agents, searching for packages and visiting booking sites. To fill it in, the June 2020 edition combined six sources:
- Open Google search data and digital traffic monitoring tools.
- An online survey of the travel industry: 49% travel agents, 29% hotels, 14% tour operators, 2% airlines and 6% other players.
- Secondary sources such as Deloitte, Smith Travel Research and the airport groups.
- An analysis of 283 conversations from leading Instagram accounts in more than 13 categories, with 38 million interactions.
- A weekly analysis of downloads of the 60 most popular apps on iOS, Android and Amazon.
- Social listening of 288 conversations about travel intent on Facebook and Twitter.
What did it find?
Some findings from the June 2020 edition:
- Google searches for domestic destinations fell 43.9% in April 2020 compared with April 2019. Searches for international destinations fell 29.7% compared with 2019, but grew 37.2% compared with March.
- Searches for vacation packages fell 74.3% compared with April 2019.
- According to the industry, 45% of travelers were postponing their trips for the second half of the year and 44% were canceling them.
- The industry expected domestic travel to return from July 2020, outbound travel from September and inbound travel from November, with a recovery to pre-pandemic levels between the second and third two-month periods of 2021.
Each edition closed with practical recommendations. One of the most repeated: talk about the destination through the emotions of travel without yet inviting people to travel, and start selling flexible packages with dates that could be changed at no cost.
How many people did it reach?
As of May 10, 2021, after nine PDF editions and one online edition:
| Unique visits to radarturistico.mx | 10,462, about 870 a month |
|---|---|
| Newsletter downloads | 2,330, in addition to email distribution |
| Distribution list | More than 8,000 travel industry contacts, with a reach of 60,300 people |
| Subscribers who asked to receive it every month | 380 |
| Online presentations | More than 45, to associations, travel companies and universities |
| Hands-on workshops | 4 two-hour sessions, with 35 participants |
What did it achieve?
- Gold SABRE Award 2020 in the Travel & Leisure category of the SABRE Awards Latin America, presented by PRovoke Media.
- It was shared with agency clients such as Destination British Columbia and Visit Orlando as input for their recovery plans.
- It turned a public relations agency into a source of data on the Mexican traveler at the moment such data was scarcest.
Do you need to understand what your travelers are seeing and searching for before deciding what to communicate? Contact us or read our frequently asked questions.