#SnapChart: Easter weekend kick starts holiday conversation

When do people start talking about and planning their holidays? In 2015, Pulsar analysed and tracked a year's worth of online holiday mentions, allowing us to identify when travel chatter really kicks off. We then delved deeper into the dataset to map the entire holiday cycle: planning, booking, booked.

This wealth of information has come from two simple volume graphs:

In the first graph (above) we can see that the amount of people talking about going on holiday increases during the Easter weekend (the first time since New Year).

Holidaymakers need to start thinking about their summer break, and apparently, Easter is a good time to start doing so. The extended weekend provides enough time for people to break free from their daily work routine and plan ahead. Not only this, but Easter being the first bank holiday of the year, the arrival of spring, and increased temperatures, all have a role to play in the drive to start looking into holiday booking.

The holiday planning phase is the most-discussed online, with the year's first peaks happening during the Easter weekend, as shown in the topics graph below:

Social media is used to canvass opinion, therefore an obvious place for holiday planning to be discussed and broadcast to family and friends. The Easter weekend allows consumers to toy with the idea of going on holiday, which is why it's such a popular period to talk about travel plans.

These SnapCharts are key to any travel operator or organisation wanting to understand the perfect time to market to their audiences. Travel marketers need to target potential customers during the initial planning stages, and if these charts are any thing to go by, then that time is during Easter.

Want to know more about how you can get audience intelligence from social insights, or you’re interested in delving further into the travel sector? Send an email to: [email protected].