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Do the numbers lie? Travel Agent Stats

I love statistics. Well, I love reading them. I hated doing statistics at school, but then again, I did not find a whole lot of love for school in general.

I love statistics. Well, I love reading them. I hated doing statistics at school, but then again, I did not find a whole lot of love for school in general.

But I digress.

As a wholesaler statistics is a big part of what we do. We run at high volume, low markup and therefore the little percentages here and there make a big difference.

Have a look at this one – searches for Donald Trump over the past 12 years:

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No secret that one of the challenges we face today is online travel agencies competing with travel agents. So I started doing some digging using some Google statistics.

First I searched, are people still looking for “travel agents” on Google:

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The truth is ‘yes’ with some see-saw variation accounting for a dip in December with a peak again in January, static globally since 2013. Therefore one might suggest the swing between OTA’s and travel agents has started to stabilize.

The same set of statistics for show searches for travel agents now fairly consistently since 2012. So does that mean OTA competition peaked four years ago?

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But more specifically, let’s look at what Aussies are searching for:

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Interesting that as one of the biggest cities in Australia that travel agent “Melbourne” does not feature but travel agent” course” does

By digging a little bit deeper you can have a look at the search terms which are on the rise – it would appear there is a lot of people considering entering the industry and searching for jobs based on these criteria. Or is that people who have lost jobs or looking to move jobs?

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Over the past 12 months, the five most popular destination for bookings through roomsXML have been:

    1. New York, NY
    2. Hawaii, Oahu Island
    3. London, Central
    4. Las Vegas, NV
    5. Paris, Central

So looking at the data over the past couple of years, is quite interesting, for Australians searching:

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Generally speaking – the number of searches for London hotels is the same as all of the other search criteria combined. It’s also interesting that Christmas week is the week when people do the least searching, the spike for hotel searches begins in the start of January all destinations.

How about emerging destinations like Cuba:

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Yup, easier to get to, more people showing interest.

Unfortunately the events in the world do not always promote tourism and Turkey’s popularity appears to be falling – the graph confirms people don’t search for accommodation options when there is a war on:

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So what can you draw from these and other statistics? It’s a very good question, and as I am not a maths geek (I was a science geek and then became a computer geek) here are five things that we are reminded on a regular basis by our statistics geeks:

      • Can you trust where the data is coming from?
      • Do you understand the real cause and effect – why is a number that number?
      • What is the analytical method for presenting that statistic
      • is what you are searching for what you are really looking for?

But the best thing about statistics? They get you thinking.

The question is what drives us; do you know the questions to ask?