If you’re thinking of traveling, the new coronavirus (COVID-19) is probably on your mind. News outlets are covering it wall-to-wall, and it can at times seem like the only thing that anyone’s talking about. Harry and I were in Shenzhen when the coronavirus first hit, and we experienced the empty malls and airports firsthand.

At Wanderlog, we’re building the best itinerary and travel planner by taking all the information travelers need and bringing it into one place. We work with data a lot, and that led me to ask: is there a way to figure out exactly how much coronavirus is disrupting the lives of folks in cities around the world?

How we did it: Google Maps to the rescue

Thanks to Google Maps’ pervasiveness, Google had introduced live popularity for a variety of businesses. According to the Guardian’s reporting,

The feature uses anonymised location data from other Google users, as well as searches, to analyse how busy it is at that moment

Of the world’s top 300 or so airports by number of destinations, about 200 are covered by Google Maps’ live popularity.

Unfortunately, this data only shows how busy the place currently is for the current hour. To get an accurate sample, we would want data that spans entire days.

We rigged together a script that runs every hour, which:

Checks how busy that airport is usually during that hour (i.e. how tall the blue bar above is), and Checks how busy that airport is right now (i.e. how tall the red bar is)

We used a quick Node.JS script to convert the data to a spreadsheet, and uploaded it to Datawrapper.de for visualization.

The data: airport fear index

Trends

Outside of hot spots, traffic is down only 10-20%: Paris is at 80% normal traffic, New York at 88%, Singapore at 90%, and London at 93%. Outside of where nCoV-2019 is actively spreading, air traffic hasn’t taken too much of a hit yet.

Paris is at 80% normal traffic, New York at 88%, Singapore at 90%, and London at 93%. Outside of where nCoV-2019 is actively spreading, air traffic hasn’t taken too much of a hit yet. Chinese airports are deserted of international travelers: Google doesn’t really operate in China, but it has data on the two largest airports, Beijing and Shanghai, both of which have about 10% of the normal foot traffic. Note, though, that this doesn’t capture domestic travelers (who don’t use Google Maps at all), for whom traffic may already be picking back up again (thanks, Bo Zheng, a reader, for pointing this out!)

Google doesn’t really operate in China, but it has data on the two largest airports, Beijing and Shanghai, both of which have about 10% of the normal foot traffic. Note, though, that this doesn’t capture domestic travelers (who don’t use Google Maps at all), for whom traffic may already be picking back up again (thanks, Bo Zheng, a reader, for pointing this out!) Korea, Italy, and parts of Japan are hard-hit: Korean airports are 30-40% as busy as usual while northern Italy comes next at 40-50%, followed by Japan (30-60%). This is still much busier than China, and perhaps speaks to the extreme means that the Chinese government has taken relative to everywhere else.

Korean airports are 30-40% as busy as usual while northern Italy comes next at 40-50%, followed by Japan (30-60%). This is still much busier than China, and perhaps speaks to the extreme means that the Chinese government has taken relative to everywhere else. International vacation spots are empty: as airlines suspend international flights, vacation hotspots and hubs are hardest-hit. The first non-East Asian/Italian destination on the list is Nha Trang Cam Ranh International Airport. You probably haven’t heard of it, but it’s a major beach town in Vietnam.Notably, according to Wikipedia, “this is the only airport in Vietnam that handles more international passengers than domestic passengers”. Other destinations like Cebu (Phillippines) and Recife are next on the list.

Curious about your home airport? Hover over a dot on the map to see its traffic relative to normal.

35 most-affected airports

Airport City Country Traffic relative to normal Beijing Capital Beijing CN 9% Shanghai Pu Dong Shanghai CN 13% Gimhae International Busan KR 33% Sapporo Chitose Sapporo JP 38% Milan Bergamo Milan IT 38% Seoul Incheon Int’l Seoul KR 41% Fukuoka Fukuoka JP 41% Milan Malpensa Milan IT 43% Bologna International Bologna IT 46% Osaka Kansai International Osaka JP 46% Venice Marco Polo Venice IT 47% Bari Bari IT 49% Taipei Taiwan Taoyuan Taipei TW 49% Nagoya Chubu Centrair Nagoya JP 51% Pisa Pisa IT 52% Tokyo Haneda Tokyo JP 52% Cagliari Cagliari IT 53% Palermo Palermo IT 54% Hong Kong International Hong Kong CN 54% Nha Trang Cam Ranh Nha Trang VN 54% Rome Fiumicino Rome IT 57% Catania Fontanarossa Catania IT 58% Rome Ciampino Rome IT 59% Tokyo Narita Tokyo JP 60% Moscow Sheremetyevo Moscow RU 62% Berlin Tegel Berlin DE 62% Naples International Naples IT 63% Hanoi Hanoi VN 65% Verona International Verona IT 65% Mactan-Cebu International Cebu PH 65% Olbia Olbia IT 66% San Francisco International San Francisco US 67% Recife Recife BR 67% Nuremberg Nuremberg DE 69% San Jose International San Jose US 69%

Data limitations

Bo Zheng, a reader, wrote in with some great caveats on the data. It’s definitely not perfect, and will not capture:

Whether airports are less busy because travelers are using them less or locals are simply visiting them less.

Whether people are canceling flights themselves due to fear, or had the decisions made for them by airlines/countries canceling flights and are unable to fly.

As a result, definitely take the data with a grain of salt, especially for places where Google Maps is used less such as China. That being said, Google’s live popularity data should at least capture e.g., for a given city like San Francisco:

How many travelers in San Francisco canceled trips to elsewhere; How many people from elsewhere avoided flying to San Francisco; How many travelers were prevented from flying to/from San Francisco due to travel restrictions and flight cancellations (arguably also due to fear); How many local residents avoided going to the airport, even if they weren’t traveling.

What does this mean?

While I expected air traffic to be down, I honestly expected it to be much worse. In particular, other than the 5 global hotspots with Level 2 and above with travel advisories from the CDC, life still goes on.

Even if you’re not planning on going on a trip in the near future, you can still daydream about it with Wanderlog! Try it out: import your flights, hotels, and plan an itinerary with real-time collaboration just like Google Docs.