According to a survey conducted by Nielsen, six in 10 Chinese plan to travel between September 29 and October 5 for Golden Week, while just 42% of Chinese reported making plans to travel this past February for Chinese New Year celebrations. 

More than half of those surveyed by Nielsen said they plan to travel within China, while about 10% were considering an overseas trip.  One-third of the respondents, surveyed between September 22 and 23, had not yet decided how to spend the holiday week.

Among those planning to travel internationally, Hong Kong was the most popular destination — with half of those traveling abroad claimed to be visiting the city.  Singapore (29%) and Macau (26%) were the second and third most popular destinations.  France (16%) and Taiwan (14%) also made Nielsen’s list of top holiday travel destinations.  

Within China, Dalian (20%) and Beijing were the most popular destinations, according to Nielsen.

Nielsen’s survey interviewed 2,000 Chinese Internet users nationwide.

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According to a 16-market survey conducted by Nielsen after the Olympics’ opening and closing ceremonies, consumers throughout the world are increasingly interested in traveling to mainland China. 

Forty-five percent of those surveyed after the Opening ceremony said they intended to travel to mainland China at some point.  Following the Closing Ceremony, that percentage increased to 51%.  For 80% of the respondents, who had never visited mainland China, it would their first trip to the country.

Meanwhile, respondents who said they had no interest in visiting mainland China dropped from one-third, after the Opening Ceremony, to one-quarter, following the Closing Ceremony. 

Interest in visiting mainland China was highest in neighboring Hong Kong (86%), Singapore (86%), and India (80%).  Large percentages of repondents in Mexico (72%), Taiwan (69%), South Africa (69%) and South Korea (66%) also expressed desire to travel to China.

Positive impressions of China, generated by global Olympics TV coverage, may account for the surging interest in travel to the country, Grace Pan, head of leisure and travel research, Nielsen China, noted. 

“According to the World Tourism Organization, China will be the world’s largest tourist destination by 2020 receiving 137 million overseas tourists in 2020, and in the meantime and generating 100 million outbound tourists of their own,” Pan said.  “With the Beijing Olympics generating such strong interest in China, they may well reach these numbers earlier than anticipated.”

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Read China Daily’s coverage of Nielsen’s findings.

According to a survey conducted by Nielsen after the closing ceremony, seven in 10 viewers across 16 countries and territories said Beijing appeared more “modern” and “high-tech” than they had expected.

Beijing also looked cleaner and greener than many viewers expected — 56% said the city’s physical environment exceeded their expectations.

Nine in 10 foreigners who visited Beijing for the Olympics also told Nielsen the city’s Olympics venues were “good” or “very good.”

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Read The Wall Street Journal’s coverage of Nielsen’s findings.

Meanwhile, Olympics fans who logged on to the Internet to follow the events around the clock set a new online precedent during the Games,  Nielsen Online reported Wednesday.

Olympics Web Portals
In the U.S., NBC, an official broadcast partner for the event, drew an average of 18 million (week one) to 18.9 million unique visitors (week two) to its Olympics website during the Games.

Yahoo’s Olympics section drove more traffic than NBC’s site, but visitors to NBCOlympics.com spent twice as much time on the site and looked at three times more content than visitors to Yahoo’s Olympics site, according to Nielsen.

In China, approximately 85% of all Internet users who went online during the Games viewed Olympics content, according to ChinaRank, a website ranking platform hosted by the Internet Society of China and a Nielsen Online partner.

On average, 62 million unique browsers viewed Olympics content each day, and during the course of the Games, Chinese Internet users viewed more than 11.4 billion pages of content across 200 Olympics-related sites tracked by ChinaRank.

Sina Olympics was easily the most popular Olympics Web portal among Chinese Internet users, drawing an average of 30.9 million unique browsers each day.  Tencent Olympics (17.9 million average daily browsers) and Sohu Olympics (12.5 million average daily browers) were, respectively, the second- and third-ranked Chinese Olympics Web portals.

Online Video
NBC’s Olympics video site drew more than 1.2 million unique visitors per day, with dramatic traffic spikes around noon on work days.  Online video use was significant during the Beijing Games, but it did not appear to negatively affect TV viewing in the U.S., which remained at record levels during the Games.

Olympics Buzz
U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps’ dramatic gold-medal winning streak triggered a barrage blog chatter.  Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt also wowed Olympics fans, but Phelps, who received five times more online buzz than Bolt, proved unbeatable in the blogsphere.

Online Advertising
U.S. Olympics team sponsors drove 9.9 billion online ad impressions before and during the Beijing Games (August 4 – 24).  AT&T, General Motors, and Bank of America were the top three advertisers, accounting for a combined total of more than 1 billion impressions.

View Nielsen’s complete Olympics online findings.

Global television broadcasts during the first ten days of the Games (August 8 – 17) attracted a cumulative TV audience of 4.4 billion viewers — or almost two-thirds of the world’s population, according to Nielsen.

In contrast, the 2004 Athens Summer Games attracted a total of 3.9 billion viewers worldwide, while the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney drew 3.6 billion total viewers.

Nielsen’s global audience estimates are based on data collected from 38 markets by Nielsen, AGB Nielsen Media Research, BBM Nielsen Media Research, Finnpanel, IBOPE, TAM India, and OzTAM.

View the full press release.

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings by the Xinhua News Agency, the Times of India, and Current.

The top two U.S.-based Olympics online destinations, Yahoo Olympics and NBC Olympics, drew an average of 4.7 million and 4.3 million unique visitors each day between August 8 and August 18.

According to Nielsen, Olympics-related websites in the U.S. are drawing slightly larger audiences on work days than weekends. 

Nielsen also reported that daily traffic to NBC’s Olympics site typically peaked at noon during the first work week of the Games (August 11 – 15), as U.S. fans logged on during their lunch hours to check for news and updates.

View the full press release.

Read the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of Nielsen’s findings.

Ads created especially for the Beijing Games by Coca-Cola, General Electric, Oreo, and Visa were among the best-remembered and most-liked commercials during the first week of the Beijing Olympics, according to Nielsen IAG, which uses an online panel to track the performance of advertising.

A Coca-Cola ad in which animated birds use straws swiped from Coke bottles to construct a nest resembling the Olympic stadium in Beijing was especially popular with Olympics viewers, Nielsen reported.

An ad for Oreo cookies showing two girls on a train in China copying each other’s every move — including eating Oreos, also scored well with Olympics audiences, according to Nielsen.

View Nielsen’s ranking of the top ten Olympics-themed ads.

The move comes with some risk, the Journal noted, citing a Starbucks in Beijing’s Forbidden City that was forced to close after Chinese bloggers argued it was inappropriate to put the cafe inside a national treasure.

But National Stadium Co., which manages the “Bird’s Nest,” has already considered that.  The company told the Journal that a recent survey conducted by Nielsen found 70% of people in five major Chinese cities accepted the idea of recruiting corporate sponsorship for the stadium.

The story also noted that 84% of Chinese in the same five major cities say they plan to visit the “Bird’s Nest” after the Olympics, according to Nielsen.

Fan buzz between July 28 and August 13 overwhelmingly focused on Johnson, who was more than twice as likely to be discussed by bloggers than her teammate Nastia Liukin. 

Liukin was ranked second on Nielsen’s list of the seven most buzzworthy gymnasts competing in the individual finals.  China’s Jiang Yuyuan rounded out the top three.

 View the full press release.