The impact of "Meranti" on political and economic life

Such a large typhoon has adversely affected all aspects of Xiamen, and tourism, as the city’s leading industry, has suffered even more. So in what aspects and to what extent does Morandi's impact on Xiamen tourism appear? This article hopes to give answers through the analysis of tourism big data.

1. Impact on tourism decision-making

Tourism decision-making refers to tourists’ decision-making on travel behavior, which occurs between travel motivation and travel behavior. According to the habits of modern tourists, understanding the transportation level, famous scenic spots, tourism services, cultural environment, safety issues, etc. of the destination in advance through Internet search has become an important basis for making travel decisions. Therefore, the study of tourists' related Internet searches can reflect the travel decision-making process, and we use the Baidu Index to understand this process.

First of all, you need to understand the search results of previous years (without strong typhoons). Using "Xiamen Tourism" as the keyword, collect the Baidu Index results for each year from 2013 to 2015.

It can be seen that in the absence of strong typhoons, the search peak for Xiamen tourism occurs from June to August every year, followed by small peaks from January to February and September. Since online searches often lag behind actual travel behavior, this conclusion is still consistent with the overall current situation of citizens traveling intensively during summer vacation, National Day, Spring Festival and other holidays.

Get search results for 2016 using the same keywords. As shown in the figure below, the search results in the first half of the year are basically consistent with the pattern of previous years. , from the end of August until September, the overall search volume declined rapidly, with only a short peak around September 13. As of September 17 (two days after the passage of the typhoon), the search volume of the "Xiamen tourism" keyword was still only 1,016 times, and the search index dropped by 28% year-on-year within 30 days.

At the same time, the search index for the word "Xiamen" reached a record high. On September 15 (the day the typhoon passed through), the number of searches reached 62,682 times. By September 17, the number of searches was still 20,689 times. , the search index rose 127% year-on-year within 30 days. Among them, most of the attention is directed to Typhoon Meranti.

When "Xiamen" experienced a new high in searches due to the strongest typhoon in history, searches for "Xiamen tourism" plummeted. This shows that this typhoon has a greater impact on the travel decisions of potential tourists in Xiamen. Big impact.

2. The impact of typhoons on market size

Internet keyword searches reflect pre-travel behavior and affect tourists’ travel decisions. So how much impact does the typhoon have on the actual tourism market size of Xiamen tourism? We conduct analysis through year-on-year changes in tourism Weibo big data.

First of all, we use the week before and after Meranti's transit in Xiamen (September 10th to September 17th, hereinafter referred to as "Meranti time") as a special research period, and September 18th as The start of the study year. This forms four complete research years from September 18, 2012 to September 17, 2016. Except for 2016, no strong typhoon made landfall in Xiamen during Meranti time in other study years. Therefore, this period in the other three years can be used as a reference for the impact of this typhoon.

Taking the entire Ludao and Gulangyu Islands as the research scope, we captured all tourism Weibo posts in the four study years (excluding Weibo posts from users registered in Xiamen), totaling 194,885 posts. The specific distribution is as follows shown in the table.

It can be seen that the proportion of Xiamen tourism Weibo posts during the passage of Typhoon Meranti reached the lowest value among the four research years. This result can intuitively reflect the impact of this typhoon on the number of tourists in Xiamen.

However, there are many variables in such calculations, and we cannot determine the extent of the impact of Typhoon Meranti on Xiamen tourism, so we use a new standard "Meranti elasticity coefficient (E)" to measure it. The calculation formula is:

E=△W1 (%)/△W (%)

Where W1 is the number of tourism Weibo posts in Meranti time in each study year, W Represents the number of tourism Weibo posts in the entire study year. Therefore, the essence of E is the ratio of the year-on-year change rate of Moranti’s Weibo in time and the year-on-year change rate of Weibo in the whole year.

Based on this formula, we calculated the Meranti elasticity coefficient for the four study years. .

It can be clearly seen that the Meranti coefficient of this typhoon reaches 4.0, which is several times that of previous studies. It is very elastic. The reflected result is that this typhoon has The scale of Xiamen’s tourist arrivals has a great impact.

This calculation method can also be used to compare the impact of different typhoons on Xiamen tourism, which will not be extended here.

3. The impact of typhoons on tourism supply

Typhoons not only have an impact on tourism demand, but also on tourism supply, including destination transportation, accommodation, catering, attractions, etc. We captured and analyzed data from OTA websites (online travel booking networks) to understand the impact of Typhoon Meranti on Xiamen’s tourism supply.

1. Impact of typhoon on tourism traffic

During the passage of the typhoon (September 15th and 16th), almost all flights and trains arriving in Xiamen were suspended. According to relevant website data, a total of 57 trains ending in Xiamen were suspended on the 15th; by the end of the 16th, 44 trains were still suspended. The number of trains suspended on September 17 has been reduced to 23.

In terms of flights, according to Qunar.com ticket booking data, more than 95% of flights to Xiamen have resumed operations as of September 17. Therefore, the impact of the typhoon on traffic arriving in Xiamen is short-lived and weak.

2. Impact of typhoon on accommodation and catering

This typhoon caused great damage to buildings in Xiamen. Will the supply of hotels and restaurants in Xiamen be affected?

First of all, in terms of hotels, we excerpted the booking acceptance status of Xiamen hotels from several major OTA websites in a short period of time after the passage of the typhoon.

As can be seen from the above table, two days after the passage of the typhoon, more than 60% of hotels in Xiamen were confirmed to be bookable, and the booking rate for high-end hotels with three stars and above reached 74%. Since the hotel booking acceptance rate is not only affected by the objective factors of the typhoon, but also by subjective business decisions, occupancy rates and other factors, the actual booking availability rate should be higher than the presented results.

At the same time, we learned about the impact of the typhoon on Xiamen’s catering through the recovery of catering reservation websites. As of the afternoon of September 17, all 746 restaurants in Xiamen listed on Dianping.com were able to accept reservations for that night; all 1,029 catering sellers on Baidu Waimai near Zhongshan Road had resumed accepting orders.

This conclusion fully shows that although the typhoon has a greater impact on Xiamen's buildings, tourist accommodation and catering are less affected by it, especially the reception capacity of high-end hotels is highly resilient.

3. The impact of typhoons on tourist attractions

According to information from the relevant Xiamen government website, all 21 A-level scenic spots in the city were closed due to Typhoon Meranti at 12 noon on September 14. At the same time, more than 3,000 people from 258 tour groups had their itineraries canceled or changed. After the typhoon passed through, most scenic spots in Xiamen were devastated. Take the Gulong Sauce Cultural Park as an example. The labyrinth landscape of the Gulong Sauce Cultural Park was destroyed, a large number of ancient sauce jars were damaged, and a large amount of soy sauce semi-finished products were lost. The total loss is estimated to be around 15 million yuan. In Tong'an Film and Television City, the trees and greening are basically gone, and the gates and archway landscapes were blown down. The direct loss is estimated to be about 4 million yuan, and the indirect loss is about 1 million yuan.

Currently, most scenic spots in Xiamen are still closed. According to information on the website of relevant Xiamen government departments: Most scenic spots, including Gulangyu Island, are expected to resume operations as early as the National Day holiday. Typhoon Meranti had a huge impact on tourist attractions/attractions in Xiamen, and the scenic spots and attractions suffered heavy losses.

IV. Conclusion

Based on the above analysis, it can be seen that Typhoon Meranti has a great impact on Xiamen tourism. In terms of tourism decision-making, it should have been the peak period for decision-making, but attention suddenly dropped by 28% before the arrival of the typhoon; at the same time, the Meranti coefficient reached 4.0, which had a great impact on the number of tourists in Xiamen; in terms of tourism supply, although catering, accommodation and transportation Although Xiamen's core attraction is recovering quickly, a large number of scenic spots have been severely damaged and cannot be restored in a short time.