The pleasure of a holiday after the Italian pandemic, characterized the searches for hotel reservations in Italy in the summer of 2022, shows that from January to August there was an increase of 131%, while international hotel reservations went down by -54%. There was a great confidence of foreign tourists in the search to book in Italy in the months from January to August 2022, despite hotel bookings not reaching pre-pandemic levels.
Sojern recorded a 154% growth in international hotel searches in Italy. The momentum of 2022 was highlighted even more by comparing the searches for domestic bookings from January to August 2022 which marked a surge of 518%.
The countries from which the research originated was the USA (27%) – a very important long-range market for Italian incoming, Italy (18.4%), France (13.8%), Great Britain (6-7%), and Germany (3.9%).
The demand geared towards a stay of 4 to 7 days but, internationally, many searches were for just one day (31%), evidence of the relaunch of business travel as well.
The situation of the search for flights to Italy is different.
Compared to 2020, the growth reached 41% of searches for domestic flights, and 15% internationally. The demand behavior was similar in 2022 with an increase from January to August of 64% of flight researches in Italy and 51% of international flight researches for the Italian destinations.
“The summer of 2022 shows us how the tourist demand, especially online, is extremely reactive and does not concern only the domestic.
“The only consolidated recipe to be able to capitalize on these new trends is to be able to have a continuous data-driven approach to plan and monitor investments and at the same time use new technologies that make it possible to adapt budgets in real-time, especially with a view to cost.
“Life and energy crisis technologies also make it possible to guarantee a return on investment with pay-on-the-stay models,” commented Luca Romozzi, European Commercial Director of Sojern.
The opinions of the marketing multinational: in setting up advertising campaigns, tourism companies must consider:
How the tourist has changed in this historical phase.
The first thing to consider is the acceleration of the digital process whereby 65% of millennial and generation Z travelers are inspired exclusively by digital content to book a trip.
There follows the tendency to rediscover destinations not far from the place where one lives rather than exotic destinations with a new interpretation, to get to know a territory and experience it through unique authentic activities possible only in that place.
Flexibility and cancellation policies are now more than ever appreciated by 78% of travelers who increasingly prefer the choices of airlines and hotels that know how to be understanding and if not, as we saw this summer with chaos flights, they still know how to adequately re-protect their client.
The trend of the mixed holiday emerges, an escape but with a computer at hand for smart working. For this reason, hotels in tourist locations are asked not to neglect advertising in which Wi-Fi and adequate work spaces are highlighted.
It should be noted that 7 out of 10 millennials and Generation Z people are more likely to travel to places where pets are welcome (even if they don’t have a pet) and that in Hilton’s recent 2022 traveler report, the booking filter “PET Friendly” was the third most used filter on the website of the international hotel chain.