I was googling about best places to visit in New Zealand and trying to gather tourism information about New Zealand. And I stumbled upon the official website of New Zealand tourism. And Market & Stats tab caught my eyes, the moment I looked at that tab, it showed the list of the countries and I got more curious what stats would it been showing related to New Zealand vs other multiple countries. I opened the stats for the Singapore. The moment this page loads, the first thing is the visualization of International Visitors – Total vs Holiday Visualization of International Visitors for Singapore . And I started wondering what this graph is all about.
What this visualization about:
Even after reading the whole article, I was still clueless. After doing a little research, I understood that this graph is showing the No. of Singapore Visitors that arriving in New Zealand over the time period of Mar 2016 – Feb 2017. One line graph shows No. of Singapore visitors coming to New Zealand for Total i.e all purpose of visits i.e business, tourism etc. Other line graph shows No. of Singapore visitors coming to New Zealand only for Tourism. In short, the graph is trying to convey the purpose of visits of Singaporean to New Zealand.
Did I like anything about this graph?
When I say I started wondering that what this graph is about – it’s clear that there is nothing I could like about this graph. But I was clear it trying to convey No. of Visitors from Singapore to New Zealand.
How this visualization could be better:
1. The title of the graph: The title of the graph is International Visitor Arrivals – Total vs Holiday. This graph is about the purpose of visits of Singaporean to New Zealand. Instead of International Visitor Arrivals, the title could be Singaporean Visitor Arrivals – Purpose of visit. Total vs Holiday makes no sense at all. The Total includes all types of visits of the visitors, but it wasn’t clear anywhere what “Total” means. For me, “Holiday” also took the time to understand that Holiday meant Vacation or Tourism. Now, depending on your targeted audience, the words used for the title matters. For a visitor like me, using “Vacation” instead of Holiday would make sense and “Tourism” if the graph was targeted for NZ Tourism Manager.
2. More line graphs on all major purpose of visit: The graph shows line graph for Total. It could have included all the bifurcations or types of the visits and shown line graph for them. For example, Purpose of visit (Total) could be divided into Business, Education, Medical. It could have shown trend and no.of visitors for each of type of visit.
3. Making it more insightful: This graph could be made more insightful by adding reasons or events that contributed to the trend in an increase or decrease in No. of Visitors. It could have recorded various events/reasons that would have helped to understand why there is an increase in No. of Visitors in the month of December.
Another graph that caught my attention was International Visitor Arrival – holiday by countries . This graph shows No. of Visitors by Holiday by countries. Comparison of No. of Visitors by countries is good KPI to understand from which country New Zealand had more no of visitors in terms of tourism. But this graph doesn’t really compare the data and trends of no. of visitors by tourism by countries. This could have been better as shown here: Overseas Residents’ Visits to Japan by Country and Region
Conclusion:
The author was trying to convey Singaporeans Visitors visiting New Zealand – Total vs Holiday. But the visualization didn’t do justice to the message or claim. A visualization should be simple to convey the story or message to any type of audience. One should in keep in mind to give importance to minute details such the words or title of the graph, even a title of the graph should match the message/claim of the graph. Adding more details by showing no. of the visitor by the different purpose of visit or just by telling what “Total” includes would add more sense to the graph.
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