Sojern's Q1 2016 Global Travel Insights Report: Summer Events Coax Concert Goers & Sports Fanatics to Book Travel

From popular music festivals to Copa America, leisure events draw crowds during Q1 and summer months

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May 04, 2016, 12:00 ET

SAN FRANCISCO, May 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Through a rigorous analysis of more than a billion travel intent data points, Sojern, the world's leading performance marketing platform for travel brands, released its quarterly report of global travel insights.

Though a range of data and insights are shared in the report, from covering how the weakened pound impacted UK travel and perhaps increased U.S. travel across the pond, to post-Ramadan travel, the report focuses on looking forward to summer travel, much of which is motivated by leisure happenings such as music festivals and sporting events.

Summer Music Festivals: From East to West
Given that a whopping 32 million people attend at least one U.S. music festival a year, Sojern analyzed flights to three of the biggest U.S. summer music festivals in order to determine the top origin cities of attendees:

The Governors Ball - New York City, New York (June 3-5)

Top-searching cities include Los Angeles, Miami, and Chicago. This festival pulls plenty of Midwest and West Coast travelers to the East Coast.

Lollapalooza - Chicago, Illinois (July 28-31)

Boston, Philadelphia, and Dallas are the top-searching cities for the 25-year-old festival hosted in the heart of the Midwest.

Outside Lands - San Francisco, California (August 5-7)

Music lovers from New York City, Washington DC, and Dallas are looking to fill Golden Gate Park gets filled to the brim with music fans for this festival and music lover.

U.S. Races to Rio for the Olympics
The end of summer brings the ultimate in sporting events—the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, hosted in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. U.S. travelers are showing a 577 percent increase in travel intent during the Olympic period. In fact, only Japan has a higher increase in travel intent, with 716 percent change. Sojern data shows that 34 percent of U.S. travelers are looking to spend 8 to 11 days at the Olympics. With the games spanning 16 days, it seems that U.S. travelers are looking to cheer on the U.S. team for much of the duration of the event.

A First: Copa America Hosted In the U.S.
This year, for the first time in history (and on its 100th anniversary), Copa America—a pan-America soccer competition— will be hosted in the U.S. (June 3-26). The day following the draw—when the games were set—cities hosting games (e.g., Seattle, San Francisco, and Orlando) saw an increase of travel intent of 54 percent day over day and 38 percent week over week from U.S. travelers for Copa dates. Boston is the number one market heading to the San Francisco games, while Dallas takes the top spot for all Orlando games.

Copa host cities also saw an increase in travel of 131 percent day over day and 74 percent week over week from Latin American countries, following the announcement of the games. All of this travel, both from within the U.S. and the rest of the Americas, is shaping up to make the tournament one of, if not, the biggest travel events for U.S. this summer.

For more travel insights for this quarter and beyond, download the full Q1 2016 Global Travel Insights report and infographic.

About Sojern

Sojern is travel's leading data-driven performance marketing engine. Through its Sojern Traveler Platform and billions of traveler intent signals across online and mobile channels, Sojern puts more heads in beds and travelers in towns for its clients worldwide. Currently one of the fastest growing travel tech companies, Sojern works with top travel brands and independent hotels in North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East & Africa and Asia-Pacific. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, with key offices in Dubai, London, New York, Omaha and Singapore. For more information, please visit http://www.sojern.com.