Using Sina Weibo and Baidu Trends Indexes to Understand China's Travel Trends

Chinese New Year travel data is a good way to demonstrate how to use Sina Weibo and Baidu Tools to better understand Chinese travel behavior.

Baidu’s Index and 360’s So Index are two indexes we have looked at in past columns. Today, let’s look at Baidu Trends – another tool for understanding user behavior in the Chinese market. In addition to search query data from search engines, trend data from local social media sites such as Weibo should also be considered as a great source of data in understanding user behavior in the Chinese market.

Sina Weibo Index

Sina’s Weibo Index tool allows marketers to examine user topic trends.

5jan15-gc-weiboindex-pic-1

Let’s take a look at some travel-related topics, as travel-related trends are usually seasonally based.

When you compare the brand names of the two largest local travel booking websites in China – Ctrip.com and Qunar.com – this is the trend you will see:

5jan14-gc-weibo-index-ctrip-vs-qunar-pic-2
In terms of genders, both travel booking website brands show similar trends and both show they are more popular among female users.

5jan15-gc-gender-qunar-vs-ctrip-pic-3

In terms of age groups, Qunar is more popular among the 19-to-24 age group, but Ctrip is more popular with the 25-to-34 age group. This might suggest that Ctrip is mostly used by Chinese workers in the early years of their working careers, while Qunar is mostly used by college/university students or recent graduates. (See below.)

5jan15-gc-age-group-qunar-vs-ctrip-pic-4

Now, let’s compare two very popular local travel destinations – for example: Huangshan versus Changcheng – by looking at trend data. Weibo provides this real-time trends for the last 24 hours:

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You can also filter the data down to the last hour:

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In the below graph, we can see that the two age groups between 25 and 34, and 35 and 50, represent age groups most likely to visit Huangshan and Changcheng.

5jan15-gc-age-group-huangshan-vs-changcheng-pic-7

 

The Chinese Spring Festival is China’s biggest holiday and sees an exodus of millions of people across the country as they travel to their respective hometowns for the Chinese New Year, which usually occurs in late January or early February every year. The topic “spring festival tickets” shows popularity started in early December. Chinese people begin to search for, or begin purchasing tickets (including mostly train tickets), at least six to eight weeks prior to the New Year week.

5jan15-gc-spring-tickets-pic-8

Baidu Trends

Baidu Trends is another tool used to look up travel destination popularity. For travel-related data, this tool usually demonstrates in map format. For a single city (e.g. Beijing), it can show places of interest that are the most crowded on a single day (e.g. December 12, 2014).

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You can see from the map below the most popular destinations when departing from Beijing.

5jan15-gc-fly-out-of-beijing-pic-10
Let’s take Lijiang, a popular place of interest in China. The map below shows the most popular departing cities to Lijiang.

5jan15-gc-fly-into-lijiang-pic-11
For Chinese tourists traveling overseas, the map below shows the most popular global destinations for Chinese travelers.

5jan15-gc-overseas-destinations-pic-12

Homepage image via Shutterstock.

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