The planned end of lockdown in the UK promises the very welcome return of travel, writes Ozone’s Client Director Sophie Raptis, who shines a light on our insight into the category
Travel - home or away - looks set to take off again with lockdown’s end in sight as desperate Brits are itching to see the world outside their homes and local areas. As such, we’ve taken a look at our travel insights.
As the UK Government announced its timetable out of the latest lockdown, the public’s attention turned to holidays. Across the Ozone portfolio weekly page views of travel content increased by +26% versus the week before the roadmap was announced, with dwell times up +31%.
With an active travel intenders audience of 23m, reader behaviour post previous lockdowns paints a picture of what could be on the horizon for the travel sector.
As we exited Lockdown 1.0 in the early summer of last year, we saw a clear correlation between easing of restrictions and increases in online travel content.
Travel content created by our premium publishers remained a source of positive inspiration with 75% of editorial containing no mention of the pandemic.
While conversions and purchase are more likely to happen at weekends, reading patterns show weekdays to be critical research periods.
In particular, spikes in engagement were most pronounced on dream-filled Monday evenings and just before the working day ends on Fridays.
Reflecting the opening of travel corridors, the proportion of destination-based ‘Where to go?’ increased consistently as Lockdown 1.0 eased.
With huge pent-up demand, we expect inspiring editorial content to fuel consumer travel choices as vaccinations continue and restrictions lift further.
We offer travel advertisers a single point of access to the UK’s biggest pool of highly trusted, editorially- governed, premium content, at broadcast-scale. Only Ozone can provide a unique single view of reader behaviour across premium publisher.
Our highly attentive audiences return frequently to our rich travel content, which inspires and informs their holiday choices and drives client market penetration.
