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The Bókun Team • July 30th, 2024
We’ve all faced unprecedented headwinds the past few weeks. One thing that I find particularly encouraging is how quickly and creatively we’re all adapting.
Google Trends have been both validating and incredibly informative. With a little bit of elbow grease and persistence, you can glean some interesting tidbits about changes in people’s search behavior, and therefore changes and opportunities in traveler demand.
So, what did I learn?
Pretty quickly, I stumbled across five different terms that all share very similar increases in interest at approximately the same scale around the same exact period of time. I think many of us can self-reflectively relate to the underlying wants and needs represented by these terms.
Based on the handful of terms above, “learning” emerges as a dominant theme . Two sub-themes could also be inferred; one based on necessity and the other on aspiration. On the necessity side, you see things like “how to work from home” and “how to cut hair” whereas aspirationally we see things like “virtual tour” and “online learning.”
If we go down one very specific tangent, we’re seeing people searching for and assumedly becoming more comfortable with video chat applications. Zoom seems to be the runaway winner .
Bear in mind that:
“Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. A score of 0 means there was not enough data for this term.”
In other words, everything is relative to the search term with the highest trending line. So, if you combine terms from previous examples with something like “how to make a mask,” you’ll see that some terms are seeing dramatically higher search volume even though interest increases around the same time.
It’s not crazy to think that people will be more comfortable now and forevermore with the idea of participating in online activities. If we take that mindset into the aspirational side of things, we see an increased interest in a variety of at-home experience- and enrichment-related searches.
It’s interesting to see the juxtaposition of already popular searches like “how to play guitar” alongside traditionally less popular searches about tiktok, Twitch, banana bread and cutting bangs. While the scale is dramatically different, the rate at which interest increased looks similar.
Honestly, my beer fridge was getting empty and I realized that other people’s beer fridges were also likely in need of refills. But this does speak to the fact that people are searching for recreational things to do in quarantine.
To put this into perspective, people seem to be way more interested in tracking down a Nintendo Switch and playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons than they are in making a mask or having alcohol delivered. Searches for “Nintendo Switch” are at the same level as they were for Black Friday and Christmas last year.
This is all to say that people are hungry for new ways to experience the world from home. While we are facing unprecedented challenges in the travel space, this does present us with an opportunity to think creatively and offer new (virtual) experiences.
Interested in chatting more about search trends and keyword research? Leave a comment below or let us know if you’d like to attend a free interactive virtual workshop about offering your own virtual workshops!