New search data reveals customers have their sights set on summer

As the world continues to show signs of recovery, we see that demand patterns are not the same as before the pandemic. From stay length to booking window, many aspects of how people travel have rapidly shifted – and continue to. 

Reassuringly, we see that more than one-third of our searches are now for summer months – June, July, August and September – back in line with the percentages we saw at this time in 2019. We know this season is a pivotal period of time, and this positive intent towards a travel-filled summer gives us hope that people are ready to get back out there in the months ahead. 

This customer behaviour places great importance on ensuring your availability is set up for success to capture bookings. The more availability you offer, the higher your chance of being seen by customers, so it’s important to be prepared and have all your rooms and/or units set up and available in your calendar.

Even though we have a positive outlook on summer, we cannot ignore that travel remains volatile. To help you monitor changes in booking behaviour, we are continuing to provide timely demand insights based on customer search data on the extranet and our Pulse app. By digging into this search data, you can uncover insights tailored to your market over the past 14 days – and use them to optimise your availability, promotions and policies.

While we’re providing the data to the majority of our partners, it isn’t available to everyone. In particular, you might not be able to access it if you’re in an area without enough properties or recent searches to make the information accurate. 

“Given the current circumstances, we know it is a very tough time for our partners and we are doing everything we can to help,” says Vipul Agarwal, Senior Product Manager at Booking.com. “We have a lot of insight into what customers are searching for, and during these constantly changing circumstances, partners are not always aware of how demand patterns and travel trends are shifting. Providing these additional insights is one way of helping our partners understand how prospective guests are behaving during this uncertain time.”

This resource enables partners to tap into a huge number of potential bookers by highlighting a variety of demand insights across various categories, including search booking window and the percentage of domestic vs. international searches. 

“The idea is that these insights will help partners understand how travellers are searching during recovery, so they can also convert those searches into bookings,” says Agarwal. “Partners can then optimise their promotions and policies based on the type of travellers they’re seeing demand from. For example, if they see the most demand coming from last-minute bookers, they may want to consider implementing Last Minute Deals.”

To access this data, visit the Data tab on the extranet or the Pulse app’s activity feed.