Launching the New Orleans Tourism Barometer

As the New Orleans economy reopens, business owners, industry leaders, and government officials are asking the same question: “When will everything go back to normal?” It’s an essential question.

We're launching the New Orleans Tourism Barometer to try to get some answers.

How are we answering this question? We're using Google Search Trends data, collected year over year data around five areas of tourism, to help identify when potential customers, guests, and tourists will be coming back to our city, and participating at the same rate as 2019.

For example, here are some highlights pulled out of week 1 of our Barometer:

• Travel: Searches this week around travel to New Orleans, by bus, flight, and car, were all down between 40-70%.
• Lodging: Search for hotels are down 68-70% year over year, for more than AirBNB or actual Bed & Breakfasts, indicating an opportunity for smaller, more private lodging options to thrive sooner rather than large properties.
• Food & Drink: While searches for “Bar New Orleans” are down 70% from last year, the “Carousel Bar New Orleans” is combatting the trend and actually up!
• Activities: The WW2 Museum is currently topping most other attractions, only 9% below last year’s searches.
• Events: While travel-related searches are down 40 – 70%, searchings for actual things to do in NOLA like concerts or festivals are down a crushing 75-95%.

Our city heavily relies on many talented chefs, bartenders, servers, concierges, ma?tre d’s, and everything in between to provide our guests with an exceptional hospitality experience. That’s why we decided to focus the Google Trends data we compiled to show you when and how interests surrounding tourism ebbs and flows throughout the year. As this year is especially significant given the COVID-19 pandemic, we hope this data can give you some kind of insight as to where your specific area of tourism is likely to see an uplift as states slowly begin to reopen.

See the Barometer at: https://www.onlineoptimism.com/barometer

After all, open businesses won’t be open for long if customers don’t show up.

Feel free to let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions or ways for us to optimize this report for you and other stakeholders in New Orleans!