A checklist to successfully targeting travellers this Chinese New Year

In order to celebrate one of the most important traditional festivals in the Chinese culture, many in Asia Pacific are taking to the skies to ring in the Lunar New Year abroad.With only a few days before celebrations commence on January 28, we dove into travel intent across Asia Pacific countries observing the festive occasion, namely China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam - in order to understand how travel is taking shape and how marketers can capitalise on these patterns to target, and convert more travellers.Let’s take a look at some noteworthy trends:Travelers looking to stay localOverall, the top destinations from January 21-28, 2017 searched by travellers in the observed countries, remain largely within the region. London is the only exception:TokyoOsakaBangkokSingaporeSeoulTaipeiHong KongLondonKuala LumpurSapporoTopping the chart is Tokyo, which is accompanied by two other Japanese cities this year – Osaka, and Sapporo.Travel marketers take note:While travellers have shown a preference for short-haul trips, that does not mean you cannot lure Lunar New Travellers to long-haul destinations. Hotels, car rentals, and other travel services in London should look to target ads to Lunar New Year travellers as they have plans to visit the city.Armed with this knowledge, those within the region should certainly look to channel their ad spends on regional travelers during this time of the year. After all, Lunar New Year is known as one of the biggest gift-giving seasons, and these travelers are likely to loosen their purse strings in celebration of this cultural trendA peek at peak departure datesDue in large part to Lunar New Year falling on a Saturday, Sojern’s data reveals that the most popular departure day is prior to the holiday; the Friday before. Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Vietnam all see the largest spike in departures on Friday, January 27, while China stands out from the crowd with its peak occurring a day earlier on Thursday, January 26.Most of these countries also observe a significant spike in departures the weekend before the Lunar New Year, from January 21-22, 2017. This effect appears to be the strongest in China, Taiwan, and Vietnam – the countries with the highest number of public holidays.Plan timing of your adsKnowing top departure dates can help you plan both the timing of your ads, and the strategy behind upselling campaigns.For example, if you’re a rental car company and you know when people are looking to land and depart, you can plan your ad campaigns to target these most popular dates. Given that these are the most popular dates travelers have searched to fly, there can be an anticipated bump in travel on airports, railways, and roads with people commuting to head home or leave the city.Hotels too can use insights like these to plan their campaigns. Eager to leverage on travelers’ intention to go on long trips, and get them to stay a little longer? In this case, the first step would be to know when people are looking to check in or out and then adding in an extra night stay as a special offer or promotion, for example.Every city shows a different preference for departures, highlighting the importance of knowing and speaking to travelers in each city in a customised manner. China and Singapore, for example, both have distinctively unique search patterns. Serving the same ads, with the same peak dates for all Lunar New Year travelers just isn’t the strongest or most timely strategy.Changing travel in 2017In order to understand any changes or shifts in travel planning this year, we compared 2016 intent against 2017. The following shifts stood out:This year we see a higher share of group and family travel intent with the largest increase observed for a party size of three or more compared to last year—a 14% increase.Solo travellers are on the decline with 3% less this year than last year.In terms of trip duration, the biggest changes are an increase in trips of 0-1 days, and more than 12+ days. One possible reason for this is a fewer number of public holidays in 2017 as compared to 2016, and therefore travellers end up taking an extended weekend.Medium length trips of 4 to 11 days, however, are on the decline.Targetting familiesSeeing that family travel, for instance, is on the rise means you might need to re-think your ad copy and campaigns.Create packages that appeal to family travel and get your ads up farther out as families tend to require a longer lead time for travel planning. Also, capitalise on the idea that long travel (12+ days) is on the rise—create packages that line up with this length (e.g., stay 10 nights, get the 11th free).As we look to welcome the year of the hardworking, resourceful Rooster, travel marketers can use these insights to create stronger, more strategic campaigns in order to keep their brands at the top of travellers’ minds before and throughout the trip!The writer is Russell Young, managing director, Asia Pacific, Sojern.