Impact of coronavirus on travel blog traffic
The coronavirus crisis is having enormous repercussions in a wide range of areas. The tourism sector is one of the most affected. At our very modest scale, we can measure it with this blog.
This site is a rather classic personal travel blog, it is mainly distinguished by the volume of contents: as digital nomads we have the chance to travel permanently for 4 years. Quite quickly we got into the game by writing content on a very regular basis: it has become a great pleasure to keep memories and help the travel community.
The blog will soon pass the 1000 article mark, usually very long (often more than 1000 words) and covering about 60 countries. It is mostly visited by people preparing a trip or already at destination and looking for very precise information (prices of a particular monument, how to get from X to Y, …)
We had planned this year to exceed one million annual visitors and the beginning of the year was in line with this goal, came the coronavirus crisis.
If we look at the SEO traffic (from search engines) over the first three months of the year. It started very well with growth of +112% in January, +125% in February to finish at -12% in March.
These changes in traffic are at constant ranking modulo the usual daily variations.
If we look at the weekly grid, we note a first decline in week 9 (week of February 24). At this time, there are still no measures in Europe but travel restrictions in Asia are starting to be important. Our flight from Mexico City to Hanoi planned for this period had been cancelled because of its stopover in China. It is becoming rather illusory to go on vacation in Asia, a region that represents a significant part of our traffic because we offer a lot of content there.
But the real dropout occurs in week 11 (week of March 9) since it is at this time that the first strong announcements will take place in France: closure of schools and then of all non-essential public places. As a French person, travel restrictions become very important, even within the European Union. It is at the weekend that we decide to stay a few months in France until the situation normalizes.
Monday of week 12 (week of March 16): the French president announces the confinement on the whole territory: game over for tourism
If we look at the daily traffic we can see quite clearly the impact of the 3 strong ads that have impacted the French:
- March 12: closure of day care centers, schools, colleges, high schools, …
- March 14: closure of public places not essential
- March 16: announcement of containment
Conclusion
It is surprising to realize that if our traffic had started to decline before, it was the announcements of the measures in France that caused the sudden drop. Many were in a form of denial before (including us) and continued to plan trips as if everything was fine.
Rounding up, our 2020 traffic before the beginning of the crisis was +100% higher than in 2019. In this period of containment, it is -50%. The coronavirus thus divides by 4 the audience of our blog.
The impact could have been even greater if we hadn’t :
- Contents related to product / service testing with little or no impact from the crisis.
- Some articles on the coronavirus that had a large audience over a few days
The financial consequences on our side are marginal, this blog generates almost no more business but it represents only a small part of our revenues. We continue to produce content for fun and look forward to the end of the crisis to start traveling and welcoming visitors on this blog again.
For those who live from tourism (travel agencies, hoteliers, airlines, tourist guides, …) these few figures give a small idea of the disaster, we wish them a lot of courage.
