The Burrow
Oct 30, 2020
With worldwide lockdowns and domestic restrictions bringing travel to a standstill, 2020 hasn’t gone easy on our global tourism industry.
But what has lockdown done to – or for – tourism through virtual reality? To escape the long days spent holed up in our homes, are more and more of us exploring our dream destinations without stepping foot outside (or changing out of our pyjamas)?
Virtual reality (VR) is a technology that immerses you in a simulated world.1 You can experience this world in a couple of ways, including:
Through virtual reality, you can visit places like Antarctica, Yosemite and Chernobyl, as well as a variety of museums and galleries around the world like the British Museum, Smithsonian and Louvre.1
So, to find out if the popularity of virtual travel has changed during these lockdown months, we pulled search volume and Google Trend data for five VR travel-related search terms. The data revealed how search interest in VR travel fared during the first six months of 2020 compared to the same time in 2019.
N.B: Search volumes from Keywords Everywhere and SEM Rush are for June 2020.
Right off the bat, we can see a jump in Google searches for ‘virtual travel’ a few months into 2020. Monthly searches for the term more than doubled from 8,981 searches per month (SPM) in February 2020 to 21,298 in March 2020.
Volume for ‘virtual travel’ climbed to a staggering 25,661 in April 2020; nearly triple that of February’s count and the peak of search interest in those six months of 2020. Furthermore, from March 2020 through to June 2020, monthly searches for ‘virtual travel’ remained at least double that of the search volumes in the same months in 2019.
It’s not altogether surprising why searches jumped in March 2020. That month saw many countries implement stay-at-home advice and restrictions, and by the end of March, most of the world was under some form of stay-at-home order (whether advised or required).2
Likewise, by 31 March 2020, most countries had total border closures or bans on travellers from high-risk regions.3
By the end of April 2020 (the month during which SPM for ‘virtual travel’ reached their highest), many countries around the world required their people to stay at home except for essential purposes,2 and several more had enacted total border closures.3
With so many people around the world stuck at home with no opportunity for travel, it’s no wonder there was such a massive jump in search volumes!
Like ‘virtual travel’ before it, monthly average searches for ‘virtual tourism’ began to climb from March 2020. Although in a point of difference to ‘virtual travel’, search volumes for ‘virtual tourism’ jumped in April 2020, not March, despite the search volume for March still being around double that of February.
May 2020 saw the peak of search interest in virtual tourism. We looked once again to stay-at-home and travel restrictions to see if there was any correlation.
On 10 May 2020, most countries around the world had ordered their people to stay at home except for essential services or exemptions.2 After this date, though, we saw many countries begin to lift the stay-at-home orders to ‘recommended’ instead of ‘required’. Some countries – including Mongolia, Australia, Germany and Japan – had lifted all stay-at-home restrictions by the end of May.
But being free to move around your own country doesn’t mean you can still travel abroad – a majority of countries still had total border closures by the end of May.3
Perhaps those in countries that started lifting stay-at-home orders in May 2020 wanted to see something else besides their backyard and jumped on Google to look up ‘virtual tourism’.
The monthly search volume for ‘VR travel’ has not been that much higher in the first six months of 2020 compared to the same months in 2019. Monthly searches for ‘VR travel’ were lower in January and May 2020 than they were in the same months of 2019.
Search interest for this term went up and down and back again for the first six months of 2020. The peak in monthly searches occurred in April 2020, when much of the world was confined to its own countries, if not their homes.
The average monthly search volume for ‘virtual reality tours’ soared during March and April 2020 – a testament to the fact that a significant portion of the world’s population was confined to both their countries and homes.
There was a jump from just 775 SPM in February 2020 right up to 4,561 SPM in March – an astronomical increase of around 488%! Like we’ve already seen with several search terms before it, the jump in search volume for ‘virtual reality tours’ in March 2020 coincides with an increasing number of stay-at-home restrictions being implemented around the world.2
However, there was a fairly significant drop in the average monthly search volumes for this term from 4,242 SPM in April 2020 to 1,962 SPM in May. The numbers rose again very slightly in May, but not anywhere near the high levels of search interest seen earlier in the year.
Search interest in ‘virtual reality travel’ hasn’t followed a steady pattern, moving up and down throughout the months. There was an increase of nearly 1,000 SPM between March and April 2020, but a decline followed in May and June.
The average monthly searches for this term were slightly higher in February, March and June 2019 than at the same time in 2020.
It’s all well and good to investigate if interest in VR tourism has increased these past months, but are people following through on their interest in virtual travelling? Are they also Googling for VR equipment (like headsets) so that they can embark on their virtual trips?
To find out, we returned once again to search volume data.
We can see straight away that Google searches for ‘VR headset’ have steadily increased since February 2020, peaking at just over a huge 580,000 average monthly searches in May 2020. This peak was well over 200,000 searches higher than 2019’s peak, which occurred in June.
Likewise, search interest in ‘virtual reality headset’ began to climb from February 2020 onwards, before levelling in April and May at 72,879 average monthly searches. Besides those two months, however, search volumes for this term have been mostly equal to the search volumes of 2019.
Of course, we can’t be 100% sure how many of these searches are due to people looking to virtually travel and how many are for other purposes (like VR gaming). Likewise, there may very well be many more people who have Googled for specific brands of headsets (like Oculus) and so wouldn’t be accounted for in these results.
Whatever people’s reasons for searching for VR headsets, it’s clear that their interest in virtual reality has increased during these months of lockdown.
If you’re keen to take off on your next adventure as soon as borders open and restrictions lift, make sure you’ve got the necessary protection.
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