Tag Archives: Sojern

As restrictions continue to ease across the region, and businesses are beginning to return to maximum capacity, things are looking up for travel intent to the Middle East and Africa (MEA), as per a study by Sojern. Travel searches to key markets within the region are gradually increasing. This is particularly noticeable in Dubai where shopping malls and private businesses are now allowed to operate at 100% capacity. Just two weeks ago, flight searches to Dubai were down 85% year-over-year, but now stand at only 40% below the same time last year, showing the positive impact that the ease of restrictions is having on travellers dreaming of returning to the city and region as a whole. Staycations and daycations continue to offer hotels across the region a chance to begin their path to recovery – especially those that can offer facilities such as swimming pools or beach access. This is highlighted by the rate of recovery of luxury hotels, which are more likely to offer the facilities that domestic travellers are seeking. ‘Workations’ are another opportunity to welcome guests back to hotels, with an increasing number of hotels offering pop-up co-working spaces for those who no longer have an office or a suitable home-working area. These short-term solutions are likely assisting in the steady growth of domestic hotel bookings across MEA. UAE hotel searches over the last few weeks are displaying a more noticeable downturn. This could be related to the high number of searches that occurred prior to Eid for locals looking for somewhere to celebrate the festive period. This peak in searches may have made the more recent drop appear more exaggerated than that experienced with bookings.

The Middle East and Africa (MEA) is starting to see some positive developments with regards to the easing of lockdown restrictions and signs of business and travel gradually reopening as per Sojern’s insights on June 1, 2020. On May 31, Dubai allowed 50 per cent of government staff to return to their offices, which will increase to 100 per cent capacity in offices from June 14. Curfews continue to be shortened, and a second phase of easing restrictions is planned for June 21 which will see the coronavirus curfew end in all areas of Saudi Arabia except for Mecca. Looking more specifically at the travel market, Saudi Arabia announced that domestic flights have returned, as of May 31, and from July 1 bookings will reopen for flights to 12 Arab countries, including Morocco and Lebanon. Whilst volumes are still lower than 2019 levels, when looking at the months travellers plan on visiting the region, there is a long-awaited, steady incline from August onwards. Search levels for departure dates to Egypt in March 2021 are only 38% below those for March 2020, further highlighting the steady route to recovery. The relaxation of lockdown measures and the reopening of selected flight routes across MEA has initially been focussed with domestic markets in mind. This is reflected when observing hotel search and booking volumes, with domestic trips showing growth ahead of international travel. The same story when looking at searches and bookings in relation to distance from the hotel. The majority of the region has experienced an increase in searches and bookings from domestic travellers situated in a 0-160 kilometre radius when we compare May to January, suggesting an increased interest in local …

Local tourism and domestic travel are expected to lead the UAE and wider GCC’s recovery from COVID-19 as the lockdown restrictions eases, according to the latest research released ahead of Arabian Travel Market (ATM) Virtual that will take place from 1-3 June 2020. The research from Colliers International, in partnership with ATM, revealed the percentage of bookings to Abu Dhabi within a 48km radius increased from just 20 per cent in January 2020 to 43 per cent in March. While, in Dubai, the percentage rose from 19 per cent to 36 per cent. Adding to this, research by Sojern, suggests staycations are expected to become the most popular choice of travel in the short to medium-term, with data revealing hotel bookings to Abu Dhabi within a 48km radius accounted for 77 per cent of all bookings in April and domestic travel from Dubai accounting for 91 per cent of searches and bookings within the same radius. Danielle Curtis, Exhibition Director ME, Arabian Travel Market, said, “We are now beginning to see a sense of pent up demand due to an eagerness among the larger populace to make up for lost time and cancelled plans. Travellers still want to go on holiday, but safety has become a top priority. As a result, the staycation trend is expected to grow in the coming months, with residents keen to take a break away from their home for a few days in a location that is familiar to them, whilst flights are grounded, and international travel restrictions still in place.” “As travel and tourism begins to return, it is crucial that hotels add value to their existing offerings with incentives such as F&B discounts …

Sojern launched a new interactive dashboard providing real-time COVID-19 travel insights. These insights will empower Sojern’s customers, partners and industry leaders to forecast travel demand and make informed decisions about market recovery. Sojern will be providing free and unlimited access to the public via the their website, a service the firm has only ever provided to customers and partners.The dashboard, updated daily at 10:30 pm UTC, will provide market-level details on future searching and booking trends indexed to pre-COVID levels to provide visibility into timing for a recovery in specific destinations. Amber Kuo, Director of Travel Insights, Sojern, said, “In COVID times, travel marketers are feeling stressed and uncertain about the future. Providing daily updates gives marketers more control because they can see how the situation is evolving, and when is the right time to act.” George Kalliamvakos, Digital Media Manager, Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, said, “Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sojern has played an instrumental role in providing insights and data to our organisation that helped us monitor demand and build predictable forecast models and action plans.” “These are extremely challenging times for hotels, the support that Sojern is giving with its big data analysis is priceless. Knowing what the consumer is looking into, helps us shape the investment on sales and marketing activities,” said Rachele Belladelli, Sales & Marketing Consultant for Hotel Rosa Alpina, Tyrol, Albereta, Castel Hortenberg and Paragon 700, Unique Retreats. “Sojern’s analyses of the public’s flight intentions are very interesting because they support us with our revenue forecast during and post-COVID, and therefore for media planning. Never has this been more important, because it has to do with the …

Special interview with Stewart Smith, Commercial Director, MEA for Sojern based on Sojern data collected on April 20, 2020. How fast can Dubai receive inbound tourists after the COVID-19?Time will tell. We aren’t yet seeing enough signs of recovery but consumer travel demand is as unique as each consumer. Post quarantine, people will be looking to get out of the house in a variety of ways, so the priority for travel marketers is to ensure they get their messages in front of them while they’re making decisions. Which countries will start travelling first?Sojern’s data shows that domestic travel will bounce back first. When markets stabilise and we have successfully ‘flattened the curve’ globally, international travel will pick up again. Additionally, we anticipate recovery will fluctuate depending on the impact the coronavirus had in each region. At a global level this will surely apply, APAC may open up first, followed by MEA, EU and then the US and Latin America. Some of APAC has been ahead of the world in their vigilance, so we expect that APAC will be the first region to recover. Already, China’s situation is largely under control and they are able to schedule domestic flights to fly travellers throughout the country. Of course just having planes in the air does not qualify as freedom of movement until countries start reducing travel restrictions. Every country is eager to remove their travel restrictions, but that decision will be entirely influenced by our success in combating the virus.  What impact will it have on both inbound and outbound from UAE?Looking at the composition of travellers searching for trips to the UAE in the last 14 days, the biggest increase year-over-year is from …

Sojern to share current travel trends at the forefront of marketers’ minds. These insights are based on data collected on March 25, 2020. The data will be reviewed on a weekly basis in order to provide a regular view of trends and patterns in consumer behaviour. This blog series, includes the data in order to aid travel marketers in their assessment of this worldwide event. They can use these trends to inform their marketing strategies during this period and be prepared for the recovery once the situation stabilises. Whilst no-one can anticipate the full impact of these exceptional circumstances, the data can provide some insight into how travellers are responding to the current situation, the more long-term impact that COVID-19 will have on destinations, and when the first signs of recovery start to appear. Global flight bookings to the Middle East are dramatically down – as the COVID-19 outbreak continues to evolve, there are further border closures, travel restrictions and lockdowns put into place across the globe. Additionally, major airlines in the region including emirates and Saudi have grounded their fleets and countries such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have enforced strict measures in order to contain the virus including dawn to dusk curfews. It is inevitable that we see global flight bookings to the Middle East drastically drop with global flight bookings to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) down 72 per cent year-over-year. Oman sees the least pessimistic outlook with global flight bookings down 38 per cent year-over-year. This is still significantly down but less so than the likes of Kuwait which has seen a 91 per cent drop in global flight bookings.

Sojern and Spark Foundry announced a partnership with the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi). This new partnership incorporates Sojern’s real-time travel audience targeting capabilities directly into its ad-buying system, or DSP (Demand Side Platform), offering it increased transparency and control over its digital marketing campaigns. A test run in the final quarter of 2019 proved that Sojern’s hyper-targeted programmatic ads, which were delivered during key decision-making moments to audiences with travel intent, resulted in increased bookings and conversions and reduced traveller acquisition cost. Over the past decade, Sojern has built a network of global data partnerships that provide access to billions of real-time travel-intent signals. These intent signals are analysed using proprietary data-science methodology to better understand travellers’ booking behaviour along their path to purchase. This information is then used to target personalised marketing messages at every stage of the funnel, in this case supporting brand campaigns used to promote Abu Dhabi as a tourist destination, as well as direct response campaigns that drive direct bookings and conversions to key Abu Dhabi attractions. Saeed Rashed Al Saeed, Destination Marketing Director at the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi said, “By managing our digital marketing campaigns within our own DSP, coupled with Sojern’s rich dataset for audience targeting, it enables us to monitor campaign performance, daily ad spend and total return on our campaign investments with more ease.” Chris Blaine, VP of EMEA at Sojern commented, “We are delighted to partner with DCT Abu Dhabi and Spark Foundry to encourage travellers to enjoy warm hospitality, family-friendly attractions, rich culture and impressive archaeological and historical sites in one of the safest and most modern …

A two day conference sponsored by Sojern and Sabre, with TravTalk as media partners, offered in-depth insight into some of the most important issues in the industry. Welcome remarks by the event organiser IQPC (International Quality and Productivity Center) stated the importance of taking in to account the rapid changes and making sure that all players adapt to these timely changes. Some of the key areas covered were the challenges and opportunities in online travel, a review of the growing trends in the travel industry from 2012 to 2017, the future of B2B supplier payments in travel, how the leading OTAs use secured ways of payment to ensure safety and several panel discussions on the importance of social media to communicate directly with the future customers.

United States is the top source market for inbound travel in the UAE, followed by Saudi Arabia, Germany, India and France, according to a recent Q2 Report by Sojern. As per the report, except for India all other destinations which topped last year dropped due to various reasons. Outbound travel ranking of popular destinations for MEA travellers had changed in Q2 as well. This time Bahrain shows the highest growth percentage of 188 per cent in travel between June 30 and July 1, followed by Qatar with 164 per cent, Iraq 148 per cent, Kuwait 132 per cent and the UAE with 131 per cent in comparison to the week before. There has been a regional travel increase from 15 per cent to 25 per cent post Ramadan.