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SINGAPORE, July 11, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — As consumers around the world plan a summer of ‘revenge travel’ in the wake of easing restrictions, Trip.com data reflects the global travel recovery trend. Trip.com analysed data from their booking sites across Europe and Asia and the results show that users are more confident to book further ahead this summer, and the appetite for city breaks, staycations and short-haul trips still holds firm in a post-pandemic world.
For more in-depth analysis on the European and Asian markets, read on.
Wednesday is the most popular day to plan a trip
For summer 2022, midweek is the most popular time to plan a holiday. Trip.com data shows that, among their users, Tuesday through Thursday are the peak days for browsing flights and hotels. Wednesday is the most popular day overall for flight searches, with Saturday being the quietest.
Deciding when to take a holiday over the summer is often a tricky task for consumers, with price fluctuations, school holidays and, in Europe, the threat of cancelled flights and strikes to consider.
When looking at the summer period (June-September) across many of Trip.com’s major global markets (UK, South Korea, Japan and Thailand), 1 July was the most popular day for flight departures. It was also the most popular hotel check-in date that users searched for on Trip.com’s sites in the UK and Thailand.
With more popular dates expected across July, August and September, Trip.com looks forward to reviewing this data in the coming weeks and months.
Hotel booking window extended by up to a week
As Covid-19 began to affect travel in 2020, uncertainty and travel restrictions spread across the industry, customers – as expected – adapted their booking habits and moved to last-minute reservations.
Trip.com data shows that by June 2020, the booking window for hotel stays had fallen from 20.3 days (June 2019 data) to 6.1 days in Asia – highlighting the rising appetite for last-minute breaks. Flights saw a similar trend, with the booking window on Trip.com’s European sites falling to 13.4 days in June 2021 – from close to double that – 22.2 – just two years prior.
However, this summer, Trip.com’s data signals a return to pre-pandemic trends, with booking windows once again rising. In Europe, the window for hotel reservations in June 2022 matches the level seen in 2019 – 14.2 days; booking windows for flights extended to 14.2 days from 6.4 days of June 2021. Similar trends are evident across Asia, with booking windows for flights rising to 16.4 days in June 2022 from 6.1 days in June 2020.
This interesting finding has reflected the returning confidence of travellers to make their travel decisions earlier than when the pandemic had just started. However, it is important to note that booking windows still remain shorter than pre-pandemic in the region, as restrictions remain across many nations and districts.
Europe: city-centric summer holidays are high on the agenda
Airlines and hotel chains have reported bookings and occupancy levels rising to pre-pandemic numbers for the first time this spring, so there is plenty of cause for celebration across the travel sector.
Trip.com’s European data echoes this uplift in demand. Its European sites saw an average monthly growth in traffic of around 10% between April and July, further underlining the increased demand for summer getaways.
Interestingly, where many travellers are opting for beach holidays over city breaks this year, the data shows that city-centric summer holidays are still high on the agenda for Europeans, with must-visit sites, culture, food and new experiences tempting customers to take trips to some of Europe’s most enticing cities.
Trip.com’s European data also reflects the vast increase in short-haul travel demand for 1 June – 31 August 2022 versus the same period in 2021. This year, although European long-haul demand is also up incredibly, short-haul trips are 27 times more popular than long haul. This proves that when it comes to summer getaways, most travellers still appear to prefer to stay closer to home when they go away.
Customers book longer trips post-pandemic
With many consumers looking to book more lavish summer holidays after two years of pent-up demand, when it comes to trip length, the figures reveal some surprising insights. Interestingly, European customers travelled for longer during 2020 than they did previously, with the average trip length in June 2019 being 6.2 days, rising to 8.8 in 2020 and back down to 6.6 in June 2022.
Asian travellers, on the other hand, are travelling for an average of 7.6 days in 2022, an increase on the average of 6.6 days in June 2019 – but a decrease on 2021’s average of 8.7 days.
Local travel rebounds well in Asia
In Asia, countries and regions that have relaxed their travel restrictions have seen an impressive market performance, particularly those in southeast Asia. Overall in the APAC region, bookings increased by 21% in May and by a further 7.8% in June.
As the most popular destination among APAC users, it’s no surprise that Singapore’s hotel bookings saw a 42% year-on-year increase in June.
Thailand’s continued popularity is a pleasant surprise. The summer months tend to be the country’s low season, yet despite a slight dip in April following the Songkran Festival, bookings continue to grow throughout the season. Overall bookings have tripled when compared to June 2021, with a 17% rise in bookings compared with May this year.
Though Thailand continues to attract customers from the UK and APAC, the country’s recovery has mainly been driven by domestic travel, with domestic flights in June increasing 2.6 times year-on-year.
Japan and South Korea saw sharp growth in Q2, with South Korean outbound flights increasing by 16 times year on year and June outbound flight bookings up 31% compared to May. South Korea eased travel restrictions in early June, so expect this upward trajectory in bookings to continue.
Japan also eased its border restrictions in June, with a large spike in bookings following the news. In May, flight searches to Japan on Trip.com’s global sites were 7.5 times as popular when compared to the same period in 2021.
Summary
This summer, as travel recovery gains momentum, travellers’ confidence to book their trips further ahead have gradually returned, while short-haul travel remains the global holiday king. Despite the enduring summer holiday beach travel trend, city breaks continue to attract customers from around the world. As airport strikes and travel chaos in Europe continues to impact customers’ ability to get away, Trip.com plans to further analyse the sector at the end of this popular travel period. Watch this space.
About Trip.com
Trip.com is a rapidly growing international one-stop travel service provider, available in 24 languages across 39 countries and regions. Trip.com has an extensive hotel and flight network consisting of more than 1.2 million hotels in 200 countries and regions and over 2 million individual flight routes connecting more than 5,000 cities around the globe. Trip.com’s world-class 24/7 English language customer service as well as additional centres in Edinburgh, Tokyo and Seoul, help to ‘create the best travel experience’ for its millions of customers worldwide.
MSME can offer user-centric hyper-personalized recommendation service
SEOUL, South Korea, July 11, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — According to Korea IT Times, Harex InfoTech, Inc. announced on the 10th that they attended the “2022 Spring Conference of Korea Management Information Society ” held at Hanwha Resort Haeundae Tivoli in Busan from June 9 to 11 and announce the results of a “new B2B service using a user-centrichyper-personalized recommendation system” conducted with a research team led by Professor Kyoung Jun Lee from Kyung Hee University (Department of Big Data Application).
Professor Kyoung Jun Lee’s research team (Professor YuJeongHwangbo, researcher Baek Jeong, Soohyun Kim, and Gunho Lee) and Harex InfoTech’s User-CentricArtificial Intelligence Research Institute (Manager Youngjae Cho, Vice President Moonho Yang) proposed new B2B target marketing service and new product brainstorming using their own developed user-centric hyper-personalized recommendation system. The recommendation system is usually used in a B2C service that recommends products to users, but Harex InfoTech’s recommendation system is a B2B service methodology that can be used in stores.
The research team utilizes a list of recommended products derived as a user-centrichyper-personalized recommendation system for the target marketing. The methodology is to make user lists by products after cross-linkingthe lists of the recommended products for each user by product, and finally, target marketing the listed users by products. This technology is currently under patent-pending.
For example, if ‘Company B’s Fried Chicken’ is derived as a recommended value based on user A’s purchase history, then company B can conducttarget marketinga fried chicken on user A. Existing target marketing was mainly conducted in groups based on demographic information such as women in their 20s and men in their 50s, but the research team’s recommendation system allows hyper-personalized target marketing based on duality (pair or confrontational relationships).
For brainstorming of new product, the research team uses a user-centrichyper-personalized recommendation system that utilizes the product name in natural language. Since the AI learns by morpheme unit (separating ‘Ham cheese toast’ into ‘ham/cheese/toast’), which is the minimum unit of the product’s name meaning, it is possible to derive a product name that does not actually exist. Derived products that do not exist in reality may rather be more suitable for users. It is under patent to use this idea for the development of new products.
It is unique that this methodology uses morpheme units to study. For example, if a user purchased ‘Chicken Breast Cream Spaghetti’, ‘Octopus Bibimbap’, ‘Stir-fried Spicy Pork’, and ‘Ham Cheese Toast’, they would learn it in the form of ‘Chicken Breast’, ‘Cream’, ‘Spaghetti’, ‘Octopus’, ‘Bibimbap’, ‘Stir-fried Pork’, ‘Rice’, ‘Ham Cheese’, and ‘Toast’. The derived value is also combined in morpheme units. Non-existing product names such as “Octopus Cream Spaghetti” and “Spicy Pork Toast” can be derived. The new product name derived in this way can be presented as a brainstorming idea for the development of new products.
Previous recommendation system research was used as a single service task called recommendation model, but Professor Lee’s research team, through one recommendation system, utilize it as a multi-service task such as B2B service-based target marketing and new product development brainstorming as well as hyper-personalized B2C recommendation service.
Researcher Baek Jung said, “The large language model GPT-3 released by OpenAI has become the one service engine to utilize various application services such as Q&A, grammar correction, and chatbot, etc.” and “We will develop various service tasks by utilizing the user-centric hyper-personalized recommendation system that has been developed as an AI engine and makeit to be used in the general commercial environment.”
Professor Kyoung Jun Lee, who leads Harex Infotech’s User-centricArtificial Intelligence Research Institute, presented under the theme of “Artificial Intelligence Sharing Platform as an Alternative to Exclusive Platforms” at the 2022 Spring Conference of Korea Management Information Systems. An artificial intelligence sharing platform based on User-CentricArtificial Intelligence is one of the alternatives against exclusive platforms from big tech or large companies.
Companies such as Big Tech monopolize data secured by customers, small business owners, individual businesses, and small and medium-sized enterprises. Professor Lee uses newly developed federated learning technology to pursue synergy in which customers and small and medium-sized businesses share artificial intelligence while keeping their data intact. Based on shared artificial intelligence, it presents a federated platform business model that provides and shares various services such as recommendation, target marketing, new product planning, and payment services.
Conventional federated learning is a form of sharing AI by creating a single model through individual companies’ data, but the newly proposed federated learning method divides data from individual companies and creates a final AI sharing model. The new federated learning methodology has been patented
Professor Kyoung Jun Lee said, “The largest AI engine at each industry and level, including medical, commerce, transportation, finance, smart farms, manufacturing, robots, and smart cities, will be built by AI sharing methods,” and “If we introduce this method, we can use each other’s data without signing a data agreement between economic players, so we will make it possible of new cooperation and business models that were previously impossible between individuals, companies, and institutions.”
Kyung Yang Park, Founder, President and Chief Vision Officer of Harex InfoTech Inc. said, “In the beginning, the business will start with a small size of AI sharing between several companies, but it will expand gradually,” adding, “It will be an opportunity to change the business model and collaboration method completely, and furthermore, this system will be established as a sustainable way of business in the era of stakeholder capitalism.”
Harex InfoTech announced the world’s first mobile card payment service in Silicon Valley in 2000 and 2013 won the ‘Best Technology Award’ at the Innovation Project 2013 held by PYMNTS.com at Annenberg Hall on the Harvard University Campus, and is building the User-Centric Hyper-Connected Shared Network by sharing the platform with all businesses and based on the network created, is creating a user-centric new economic order that maximizes user benefits and business profits with hyper-personalized Digital Me services based on User-Centric AI sharing platform.
Read MoreSmartX Ranked 1st in China HCI SW Financial Vertical Market for 2 Consecutive Years
BEIJING, July 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — IDC recently published “China SDS and HCI Market Overview, 2021Q4,” in which SmartX shows rapid growth in HCI market share. Particularly, SmartX is recognized as one of the key vendors with the fastest growth in China HCI software market due to its achievement in the financial services industry (FSI). In fact, this is the 2nd year in a row that SmartX ranked 1st in China HCI software financial vertical market.
The report shows that SmartX is also the No.1 pure-play vendor in China HCI market. In 2021, SmartX claimed 2.6% of the China HCI market (with an 84.7% YoY growth), and 4.1% of the China HCI software market (with a 69.9% YoY growth), following large DC vendors and cloud providers.
IDC attributed SmartX’s outstanding growth to its achievement in product performance & stability and financial vertical market:
“Software-driven HCI products have great potential in the Chinese market. Industries that seek flexibility, for example, telecommunications and financial services industries, have already increased the procurement of HCI software. Vendors such as SmartX took this opportunity and kept up the product stability and performance, which helped the company earn a good reputation among financial institutions and achieve an increase in the market share.”
In 2021, SmartX made substantial market progress, especially in the FSI industry, as SmartX claimed 25% of the China HCI software financial vertical market share. SmartX HCI’s stability and flexibility have been proven by customers, as they:
Beyond the FSI industry, SmartX is also actively working with industry leaders in healthcare, manufacturing, retail and real estate, etc., with a footprint across countries and regions including APAC, the Middle East, and Europe.
Read MoreBEIJING, July 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — In July, 2022, with the support of EEO’s hybrid technologies, Peking University successfully concluded the first academic year of its Global Open Courses Program in partnership with a list of distinguished institutions, including Tokyo University, Nanyang Technology University, Moscow State University, Waseda University, University of Granada, Osaka University, Ritsumeikan University, Chulalongkorn University, Cornell University, and Cairo University.
EEO was founded in 2014 with the purpose of building an inclusive and student-centered learning ecosystem through the power of technology. Since 2019, EEO and Peking University joined hands to collaborate on digitizing physical learning environments, constructing specialized archeology classrooms, and adopting hybrid learning methods. It is a nonstop journey for EEO and Peking University to explore how to better motivate students and support educators in experimental teaching strategies. The project of Global Open Courses Program focuses on how hybrid learning gives rise to an enriched learning experience and expands learning communities.
Hybrid learning, a method that incorporates hybrid technologies and open educational practices, has witnessed increasing adoption in K12 and higher ed institutions globally. Teaching Economics as part of the Global Open Courses Program, Professor Huang Yiping successfully engaged students in the classroom and those joining virtually with group discussions and activities.
“Our professor came up with eight topics for discussion, encouraging us to form groups with students overseas. And we have been keeping in close touch with students online as well,” Li Yipin, a student in Professor Huang’s class, reported.
For many, the program’s hybrid courses placed vast learning resources within reach. With abundant course offerings, students had extensive opportunities to explore emerging topics with a cohort coming from diverse background.
The platform of choice, ClassIn, is an all-in-one solution for online and hybrid learning with interactive virtual classrooms, a school management backend system, student learning reports, and more. Currently under internal testing, the product will support more innovative teaching methods by transforming into an LMS, a platform that caters to each step of the learning process in addition to the already powerful synchronous in-class interaction.
It is evident that EEO’s product family is designed with the consideration of scientific methods, masterful teaching, and lifelong learning. ClassIn, one of the first online classrooms in the world, was released in 2015. Building on feedback from educators and in-depth research, EEO released ClassIn X, a new hybrid solution for the new era. The company is also in the process of developing TeacherIn, a curriculum co-construction platform. It helps teachers find like-minded partners, with whom they can design and share lessons.
As of now, EEO has partnered with more than 60,000 institutions around the globe and expressed great passion to collaborate with international educators and institutions, sparking the creativity of teachers and creating innovative learning experiences for students.
