Interested to know what’s being said online about our region? Well, the Tourism Sentiment Snapshot for January 2022 has been released, and we think it paints a great picture of the growing positive sentiment for Geelong and The Bellarine.
Let’s also not forget about our region’s notable gong of taking out #25 and #69 in Leading Places: The 100 Most Loved Destinations Around the World for 2021, released by the Tourism Sentiment Index.
We’ve highlighted a few of the most interesting January results below.
ON THE UP
In comparison to December 2021 results, the Tourism Sentiment Score for our region has increased by four points in January to 27.
This is one of the highest results we’ve achieved in the past 12 months, with February 2021 also ranking highly.
Our lowest result occurred in June 2021 which coincided with low visitation numbers.
LOVE FOR OUR BEACHES
Our region’s most talked about and most appealing topics were one and the same, with our beaches taking out the top spot for both.
Online conversations about beaches in the region generated a sentiment score of 41 and made up 1 in 6 of all positive conversations.
WEDDINGS ON THE UP
Much like the physical increase of weddings taking place recently, it was the topic with the largest increase over December. In January people were talking online about weddings 21% more than the previous month.
Restaurant / dining / takeaway followed closely behind with an increase of 19% and spectator sports with an increase of 18%.
While these three topics may not rank in the most talked about, they show the potential trends and opportunities to leverage in February.
ACCOMMODATION CHANGE
While maintaining a high Tourism Sentiment Score of 41, accommodation had the largest decrease with 45% less conversations online than those in December.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Tourism Sentiment Index gathers data from more than 500,000 online monthly conversations on peer-to-peer communication platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TripAdvisor, Reddit, Tumblr and YouTube.
Through these online conversations, which are unprompted and unbiased, TSI generates a ‘score’ which reflects each destination’s ability to generate positive word of mouth about its tourism offering.
Thanks to mobile phones and the online world we live in, we’ve never had as much access to data as we do right now.
The Tourism Sentiment Index is one of many data sets we keep a close eye on and these results contribute to our understanding of the current state of our local industry.
