As tourism picks up across the globe, there’s no doubt that Bali is back. Voted as one of the top destinations to visit by travelers during the pandemic, the island certainly is seeing a growth of visitors this year which for most of the local businesses here – is a huge relief. 

At the peak of the pandemic, tourism in Bali reduced by 93% which led to many businesses closing and the island becoming a ghost town. With limited access to the island, the destination was eventually left with rows and rows of empty shop lots, abandoned malls, and musty hotel rooms. Topping it off with an exodus of retrenched workers leaving for their hometowns, it was hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel for many local businesses. 

But not all was lost during the pandemic. With campaigns such as Work From Bali promoted by the Indonesian government, some hotels and restaurants thrived with locals from Jakarta and Surabaya making Bali their base. Providing attractive longstay rates, some hotels in Bali managed to keep its venues open whilst waiting for tourism to recover.

With the eventual vaccine rollouts, the easing of access into Indonesia and its international airport reopening, Bali tourism arrivals have increased by over 200% compared to last year. Naturally, as avid data crunchers, we were keen to discover – which destination on the island was the most searched on the internet? Read on to find out!

Bali 2022 Search Volume Trends

Data compiled from SEM Rush and analysed by Wavemakers.co

Key observations:

  1. Ubud is the most searched destination in Bali with Uluwatu closely behind
  2. All destinations had a major search growth from the month of July
  3. Ubud increased its search volume by 1.5x in July to 80,500 searches on the keywords compared to its average monthly search of 49,000 per month. This could be due to the recent Travel + Leisure article which voted it the best city in the world to live in.
  4. Top countries searching for Ubud are Indonesia, France, USA, Germany and the UK.

What hoteliers in Bali can potentially do with this data:

  1. Create a welcome email ahead of arrival inviting guests to let you curate a personalized Ubud/Uluwatu experience with your preferred tour operator or in-house team.
  2. Collaborate with influencers from the top 5 markets to promote your hotel offerings.
  3. Create ad content that brings the viewer on a journey that begins at the hotel to Ubud to Uluwatu and wraps up the day of the viewer relaxing at the hotel.
  4. If your hotel is located in Ubud, run brand awareness ads to the top 5 markets searching for a hotel. If you are already marketing to these countries, ensure to increase your budget for them. 
  5. If your hotel is not located in Ubud, you can still run ads to these potential markets but your ad content will be focused on giving curated experiences to this destination.

Over the next months, we’ll make it a point to observe key travel trends in Bali. Through our robust tech stack and market research expertise, we’ll be sharing more insights that can help your business take strategic marketing actions. Interested to gain these insights personalized? Contact us to get a custom report!

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