The Demand Explorer for Flights: Destination Trends dashboard displays current and historical metrics to identify trends in traveler interest. The data is derived from google.com searches where the user expresses an intent to fly to a specified destination.
Travel partners use these insights to plan their marketing strategies and find the most potentially profitable routes and destinations.
Which routes are attracting the most interest?
What are the top destinations?
How are people searching for flights?
What populations are traveling more?
This Help Center document contains the following sections:
- Introduction
- Using the Filters
- Dashboard sections
Introduction
We measure market demand by analyzing travel searches on Google.com. The Demand Explorer dashboards favor queries that provide an origin and a destination, such as: If they don’t specify an origin, we look at their location, and try to get a good estimate on their origin, if the location is ascertainable. Otherwise, the query is discarded at the route level. Same with destination.
- cheap flights from dublin to london
- air fare to new york from rome
- LHR to ORD
The queries are not associated with any particular airline. All users of the dashboard receive the same results. (To view data on queries for your brand, see the Brand Insights dashboard.)
We gather other relevant information if available, including the user's device and location. You can filter results by these criteria, as well as by origin and destination subcontinents, countries, and cities.
Using the Filters
The dashboard shows data about air travel queries made on google.com over three time periods: the last 84 days, the last 28 days, and the last 7 days prior to the date indicated in the “End Day” field of the “Data Set Coverage Period” window. Because the data is heavily processed to ensure accuracy and anonymity, the data usually lags by three days.
Geo Filters
Use the Geo Filters to limit results to specified origins and destinations. Multiple locations may be selected.
Subcontinent
The world’s six inhabited main continental areas are broken into the following subcontinents:
Africa: Central Africa, East Africa, North Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa
Asia: East Asia, South East Asia, Western Asia
Oceania: Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, New Zealand, Polynesia
Europe: Eastern Europe, Western Europe
North America: Central America, Northern America
South America
Country
Over 200 countries are included.
Region
Regions are political boundaries defined as “Administrative Area 1” by the United Nations. What comprises a region will differ from country to country. In the United States, a region is a state, such as Massachusetts. In Canada, a region is a province. In Lithuania, a region is a county. In some cases, a region may also be a city.
City
Cities will often encompass greater metropolitan areas associated with a major airport.
Advanced Filters
Advanced filters control other aspects of the query results:
- Is Domestic: Whether the flight is within a country (true) or between countries (false).
- NDOD: Non-directional code of city pairs, for example LAS-LAX includes Los Angeles to Las Vegas as well as Las Vegas to Los Angeles.
- Queries: Number of times users searched for the keywords related to the available routes. Filter is applied at the most granular (row) level in the data table. For example, queries >= 50 means that the data must contain at least 50 daily searches with all available slices such as city-to-city route, domestic vs. international, device, and user region.
- Device: Device used when searching (mobile, desktop, or tablet).
- User Location Type: Where the user was located when the search occurred—at the origin country, destination country, or rest of the world (anywhere else). The user location is collected from browser or device settings, if available.
- User Subcontinent: The subcontinent where the user was located when the search occurred.
- User Country: The country where the user was located when the search occurred.
Note: If you set the user location type, ensure that it doesn't conflict with the user subcontinent or country setting.
Dashboard sections
Demand Explorer for Flights: Destination Trends consists of the following charts and reports:
Query Demand Summary
Highlight user demand and Yo3Y, MoM, and WoW trends over the last 84, 28, and 7 days.
Query Demand Summary shows the timeline demand and the percentage of domestic vs. international queries broken into 84-, 28-, and 7-day trends:
- Total Queries (R): Number of times users searched for the keywords related to the available routes.
- International %: Percentage of queries for international routes (origin and destination cities are in different countries).
- Domestic %: Percentage of queries for domestic routes (origin and destination cities are within the same country).
Destinations
Identify the top flight destinations by subcontinent, country, region, and city, sliced by domestic vs. international flights.
Destinations are separated into six panels. Destination by subcontinent, country, region, and city each have a panel showing queries for the last 84, 28, and 7 days in tabular form.
- Dest. Subcontinent: Queries aggregated to a large part of a continent, such as North America, East Asia, and so on.
- Dest. Country: Queries aggregated to countries, such as the US, Indonesia, France.
- Dest. Region: Queries aggregated to a large part of a country (for example, states in the US).
- Dest. City: Queries aggregated city.
Two additional panels contain scattershot charts displaying 28-day and 7-day queries for the top ten destination countries with Yo3Y vs MoM comparisons.
Routes
Identify top routes based on country-to-country and city-to-city pairs.
The Routes sections of the Demand Explorer for Flights: Destination Trends dashboard shows the top origin and destination pairs by query volume, with Yo2Y, MoM, and WoW comparisons. Periods are broken into last 84, 28, and 7 days, subject to filters.
Queries by Country-Country Route
- Origin: Country where the route starts.
- Destination: Country where the route ends.
- Domestic / Int’l: Whether the flight is within a country or between countries.
Queries by City-City Route
- Origin: City where the route starts.
- Destination: City where the route ends.
- Route ID: Code of city pairs, e.g., LAS-LAX means Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Routes are directional.
User Demand
Identify demand trends based on the user’s country.
The User Demand section of the Demand Explorer for Flights: Destination Trends dashboard shows which countries have the highest query volume. This information is presented in four panels:
The “Queries by User Country” panel displays the top countries in tabular form with Yo2Y, Mom, and WoW comparisons.
The “Queries by Int’l vs. Domestic” panel compares queries for international and domestic travel over the last 84 days, subject to filters. Hover your pointer over the chart to view data details.
The remaining two panels show scattershot charts of the top 10 countries with the highest query volume. The first shows the last 28 days with Yo3Y vs. MoM comparisons. The second chart shows the last 7 days with Yo3Y vs. WoW comparisons.