Friends above Rivals

When a continent-wide competition like Eurovision 2020 rolls around, tensions can run high between the competing countries and historic rivalries come to the forefront. But while things may get heated, Booking.com knows those rivalries actually stay on the stage. That’s why, as an official sponsor of the world’s most popular song contest, the travel brand wanted to show how music – and travel – help bring us together.

We studied all the brand’s data pertaining to the nations competing in Eurovision 2020 and analyzed the relationships between them when it comes to travel – looking at the number of trips, scores, reviews and endorsements that travelers from each one of the countries left on the site after their trips within Europe – and discovered something surprising: The countries that are considered the biggest “rivals” were, in many cases, actually each other’s biggest fans.