Panama Statistics Revealed |
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| Written by Matt |
| Wednesday, 04 February 2009 07:19 |
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There are a number of blogs in Panama, including this one, which make projections about the future of the country: from real estate to tourism to overall development. It's hard though, without any concrete statistical evidence, to back up any of these claims primarily because the majority of government numbers are suspect, an imprecision which forces analysts to go solely by "feel." Do Panama's hotels feel full? Do real estate project feel like they're selling? Does it feel like people are still showing interest in Panama?
As an internet marketer, I believe there is no better litmus test of popularity nowadays, no matter what it is you're examining, than web traffic. Skeptics may argue that web traffic reflects only a certain demographic, or that tracking technology is not accurate. I'm fully confident though, that there's no better indicator - a means to measure that intangible buzz of something - than the amount of times it's searched on the web's most popular search engine Google. That being said, let's take a look at the popularity of various consumer goods and services in Panama which have been on the hot seat lately: one way to statistically evaluate "interest" in Panama's most debated markets. I've selected 3 main keywords or phrases that overarchingly represent pockets of the market this website focuses on: Panama real estate (investment), Panama hotels (travel), and Boquete Panama (the most developed region for relocating foreigners outside of Panama City). I also added in some comparison data coming from Costa Rica. The statistics are according to Google Trends. While the general gist of these graphs is pretty straightforward, I'm hoping some of our regular readers and experts can contribute some thought as to why they are this way and where they're going in the future:       Visitors to The Panama Report:  I was playing around with a feature on one of the accounts that monitors traffic to The Panama Report, when I clicked a link called Geographic Overlay and the screen filled with a map of the world, pegged with a ton of little indicators showing where visitors to the website were coming from at that particular moment. Whereas traffic statistics for an entire day might look graphically overcrowded, like a busy ant hill, the time period of this cluster was ten minutes so the results were reduced to a degree of intimacy: almost like a social gathering where everyone knows each others name. The north east coast of the United States had by far the most readers, and while I don't particularly like people from Boston for fear that they're always a bit too intense, I looked at the arrow showing 21 readers and showed a grateful grin. "Thank you," I whispered. I had never envisioned myself getting along with folks from Japan, for fear of a language barrier. But here was one Japanese person I already liked. "I noticed you were reading my site," I might tell him and bow. Arigatou gozaimasu. You will notice a lack of visitors from Europe, probably because this snapshot was taken in the evening (USA time), which would be sleepy time for the Euros. There was one visitor in this little time interval visiting from Madagascar, which I thought was funny as well as someone sitting on a beach in Australia. While this isn't the most complete map it does help to get a feel for where people (who are reading this website) are coming from. If you have insight regarding these internet traffic trends, please use the comment section below to voice your thoughts... Trackback(0)
Comments (12)
  written by Igor from Boston , February 04, 2009 LOL, Matt your Boston comment got me chuckline! Can someone explain to me (new to Panama - but looking to invest) when they think the Panama real estate market will adjust or correct itself? I have been reading this site for a few weeks now and am happy I found it!
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written by Seattlegrl , February 04, 2009 Nice to see some actual charts/graphs - haven't found any real hardcore evidence regarding anything about Panama thus far.
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 written by casey , February 04, 2009 Being a web nerd, I look at Google Trends a TON. After tons of study, I concluded that this still a beta program and the stats are suspect. I think for Costa Rica they may be accurate b/c there has been so much traffic for so many years that the baseline data is strong, but I think the way they capture data has been changing and so the results reflect that, moreso than any real up/down trends in keyword demand. Can any other geeks back me up here?
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 written by Steve S. , February 05, 2009 I think my fellow geek casey is on the mark.
 I do appluad you Matt for trying to make a statistical evaluation so keep up the great work. A few other thoughts: 1) A significant percent of the buyer demo in Panama is "Seniors" who generally are not as Web savy and don't use the Web as much as the younger folks. Thus the stats as presented may skew to the younger set. 2) Thinking outloud and not wanting to pry, try looking at aeither your AdSence keyword Buys and or Keyword revenue since thats generally spot on and may show a trend for a number of keywords. It would be interesting to see the trends from both angles. 3) What do your own site stats say? Specifically: uniques, PageViews, and PageViews per Uniques? Those might help all of us wrap our heads around this issue and since your site demo is targeted only at Panama, may unlock some information. Continued best wishes Steve report abuse
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written by Everest , February 05, 2009 Google Trends aren't 100% accurate - but in comparing them with Google Analytics, they are pretty dead on. Additionally, while the numbers might not be exact, Trends is good for showing general "trends" - as the Costa Rica examples show above - as long as there's enough data to be analyzed. I believe Panama does not have enough search volume yet to really show on the radar. INteresting piece though.
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 written by Alan , February 05, 2009 I just stayed an entire month at the Sheraton Four Points in Marbella (which by the way is the best hotel, service wise in PC) Anyway, staying an entire month of January allowed me to see how busy the hotel was. Its located in the banking district and clearly it was busier during the weekday but dead on weekends. A few people that I met were on vacation but clearly business people were the significant visitor. The hotel restaurant had busier mornings but you could roll a bowling ball down the restaurant in the evenings and hit no one.
Business is definitely down compared to last year when it was much busier the same month. Real estate appears to still be of high interest by those I met and many were thinking of Panama because they wanted to get out of their own home countries (US and Canada especially) report abuse
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written by Steve S. , February 06, 2009 Alan reminded me of something. Although my home is in Costa Esmeralda, when I landed at PTY on a Monday (12/29/0
 during the day, we ran out of time so I just walked into the Executive Hotel and grabbed a room without a reservation. A week later I had business in PC and had no broblems booking at the same Hotel for a couple of nights. Not busy at all. The restaurant was nearly always empty. And, as many of you know, this is a popular Hotel for business geeks and those who know about their inexspensive rooms and central location.
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 written by Ed Panama connections , February 12, 2009 Good thoughts Matt. Personally I think the only problem with Panama stats is that their interactive websites and marketing pursuits are way behind Costa Rica and others who have marketed online more effectively over recent years. Yet, the hotels and planes are still more full of business people coming to PTY versus SJO in recent months...so not sure your correlation works online. I would like it to someday though. I do think your data is good for marking where interest is coming from in PTY.
Hope to buy you a beer soon. report abuse
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 written by panamawriter , March 17, 2009 I like your attempt at quantifying things in Panama. I am reminded of when I came here two years ago and was reading, on line, about the Panama Canal. Every place I looked I saw the same set of numbers for Panama Canal tonnage, tolls, and number of ships until I looked at the ACP website and one real estate page, ABPanama. It turns out that everyone was quoting everyone else and the generally quoted numbers were three years out of date.
ACP is a good reference site for the Canal but the government tends to inflate expectations of collateral employment to result from the Canal Expansion. Anyway, thanks to ACP, you guys, and the little web site, http://www.abpanama.com/panama...anama.php, for keeping stats, accurate stats. report abuse
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 written by RevealRealEstate , March 18, 2009 Agree with you that its hard to get your hands on reliable data. For example when looking at real estate market data and comps are not readily available from property institutes, registries or central bank databases. To try and fill this gap we’ve collected data from real estate developments in Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Belize and put this information online at www.revealrealestate.com - Would love to have your views on this as a market insider. We're planning a trend analysis in 2009.
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| Last Updated on Wednesday, 04 February 2009 07:53 |
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Hotels: notice how Costa Rica hotels are evenly decreasing while Panama's are choppy? This is probably because there aren't many hotels in Panama - the few of which are empty in the down season and full to capacity in the high season, thus radical changes.
Boquete: This one really interests me. A gradual increase in popularity that doesn't appear to be stopping with the onslaught of 2009. It is clearly the most stable graph you have, maybe other than the Costa Rica travel industry which is a model of perfection.
Thanks for posting these and will look forward to a similar report some months down the road when the real crises hit! - Stan