Google Launches New Site To Help Travel Industry Gauge Demand

As the pandemic-hit Indian travel industry hopes for a quick recovery, Google on Monday launched a new website that provides demand trends from search data to sector participants.

Called 'Travel Insights with Google', the new website will help better understand pent-up travel demand and leverage insights from these tools for businesses to position themselves for recovery, the company said.

"The pandemic has had a direct, immediate and continuing impact on the travel industry. But it is also one of the industries that has been at the forefront of digitisation," Roma Datta Chobey, Director - Travel, Google India, said in a statement.

"Our Travel Insights with Google tool recognises that, and amidst this volatility, provides players real-time, actionable analysis of travel intention and sentiment, domestically and from overseas, for better and more agile decision making."

Based on user search data, the Travel Insights with Google tool can point to two kinds of time-specific trends -- Destination Insights and Hotel Insights.

The Destination Insights tool will give a clear picture of the top sources of demand for a destination, and the destinations within countries that travellers are most interested in visiting -- helping the industry map out a possible resumption of travel on specific routes and make choices about where to communicate with potential future travellers.

Hotel Insights is designed to help properties of all sizes, especially small and independent hotels, understand where travel demand for their geography may be coming from, and get tools, advice and tips for making their businesses stand out online.

For instance, in the month of November, growth in search interest for domestic travel to cities such as Shirdi, Chandigarh, and Bagdogra was strong.

In this same period, travellers in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, and Gujarat top the searches for accommodation options.

The tool also provides granular insights into travel demand for single geographies split by air travel demand and demand for accommodation.

During the same period, the tool shows that the top demand for outbound travel from India by air came for Male, Bangkok and Dubai, while the top growing cities by search interest were Male, Genoa and Boston.

In addition, the website also hosts the Travel Analytics Center.

Available to Google's commercial partners in the travel sector, this will enable these organisations to combine their own Google account data with broader Google demand data and insights to give a clearer picture of how to manage their operations and find opportunities to reach potential visitors.