By combining Brandwatch data and regional check-in data from Swarmapp and Path, hug digital are able to better understand trends in individual regions and countries, from where people spend their time, to the sentiment of consumers in any given place. With this new view of the customer, hug is able to better advise their clients. This case study takes a look at their first findings using check-in data A study by research & analytics team at hug digital

1. Egypt and the Gulf Check-Ins Online

2. The contextIndex:
We conducted this study by
collecting and analyzing data from
Brandwatch and used the new
Word Cloud to uncover insights
and identify relevant insights.
Some manual analysis was
conducted off-platform but
we tried to keep it all on
Brandwatch’s interface to prove
that a lot can be done just by
using our browsers. We built one
query, one dashboard, and lots
and lots of rules.
Countries monitored:
Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE,
Qatar, Bahrain and Oman
The purpose here was to take a
look at certain behaviors in these
countries to uncover insights we
were unaware of and validate our
assumptions.
One of our objectives was to see
what’s ‘hot’ that people talk about
in the region and for each country
individually.
We quickly realized that it was
going to be extremely difficult if
we were to tackle it with a classic
approach (list popular brands,
assess volume and segment), not
to mention the amount of time we
would spend preparing instead of
analyzing.
Then it hit one of us; CHECK-INS!
1. The context
2. Introduction
3. Executive Summary
4. What are consumers doing?
5. Top 3 check in habits by country
6. Hottest brands/places for check-in’s
7. Starbucks killing it!
8. What’s all the fuss about education?
9. Roads? Yes, a lot of people check-in at roads
10. 9 to 5 job, I don’t think so…
11. TV addicts and binge watching

3. Why Check-ins
though?
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We’re not talking about what you do 5 minutes before a flight, we
are talking about actively broadcasting to people that you are at a
certain location using your smartphone’s GPS. You could check-in
on most social media platforms and share it with your group or do it
via an app dedicated for this.
Well, going to a place and sharing your experience is an indication of
how (di)satisfied you were. Everyone has shared something at some
point in their life, and probably shared it because it impacted them.
We thought what if we could attribute these shares to locations,
brands or other specific entities? How would we start? What could
be the result?
Excited to start, we decided to go for the biggest check-in apps;
Swarmapp and Path. We collected over 700,000 shared check-ins
on Twitter for 2017.
We viewed these check-ins to
derive various insights.
We anticipated being able
to geo-tag lots of check-ins
and identify location-based
insights. We also saw check-
in categorization and volume
prediction happening based on
seasonality and other trends.
We explored reaction at retail
by looking at the sentiment and
volume of check-ins for brands
like Starbucks.
We hoped we could deliver
cost effective results in a short
time period that might support
primary retail audits.
But for now, enjoy these insights.
USER DATA PRIVACY NOTE:
We believe that user data privacy is just as important as sharing personal experiences, in
this report we have masked all user data, kept only aggregated data.
Under no circumstances will we be sharing personal information and we hope this
applies to all research based on location-based data. A user should never feel they are
individually being tracked or their personal information being shared publically.
We hypothesized that Check-ins
could also push user generated
content significantly and create
more brand equity from very
little effort.
Halfway through our analysis,
we noticed the sheer volume
of insights that were available
and decided to concentrate on
some core areas that we found
interesting.

4. Right off the bat we noticed
something interesting; size
doesn’t matter! We are referring
to Kuwait. Kuwait has a total
population of about 4M and
generated over a third of a
million check-ins in 2017, whilst
Egypt has a total population of
96M and represented
a little over 9k.
Executive SummaryIntroduction:
We observed close to one million check-ins
across Swarm & Path, from the GCC and Egypt
alone in the past year! That’s a lot, considering
these represent only 2 check-in methods.
Residents of the Middle-East check-in everywhere, whether they’re
at their favorite café, restaurant, mall or gym. They even go as far as
checking in to places of worship and hospitals!
It’s ‘Check-in MANIA’ ladies and gents!
Let’s put that into perspective;
Kuwait’s population is only 4%
that of Egypt. For every one
person living in Kuwait, there are
23 Egyptian brothers & sisters
in Egypt. Despite this, Kuwait
still produced over 38 times the
number of check-ins!
This should end the size doesn’t
matter debate.
Kuwait
Iran
Iraq
Saudi Arabia
Bahrain
Qatar
UAE
Oman
Egypt
Volume of check-ins per country:
Kuwait @ 349K | KSA @259K | UAE
@ 52K | Egypt @ 9K | Qatar @ 8K |
Oman @ 7K | Bahrain @ 6K

5. Taking a look at each country’s most popular check-ins, and analyzing what
they are doing at that time, we can derive the following learning’s;
• Cafes and restaurants are top of mind for checking in. They are the most
popular places people check-in at, for 4 of the 7 countries. They rank
second place for the remaining countries.
• What’s all the fuss about for schools and universities in Kuwait and KSA?
They were the second most popular check-in point; making one in every
four check-ins there (compared to one in every 10 in KSA).
• The most checked-in place in Bahrain were roads; specifically, the
King Fahd Causeway? Nearly all of Bahrain’s mentions were at King Fahd
Causeway (see “Roads check-ins @ KSA & Bahrain”).
• It seems Oman conveys a great work ethic? Office check-ins for all other
countries barely made it to the top 10 list of each country, but rank
second for Oman. Conversely, for Egyptians, they conversely exhibit a
reluctance to check-in either early or late.
• Saudi Arabia LOVE movies & TV shows, they check-in on all hours of the
day while getting their dose of film
• Kuwaitis are getting in shape; gyms, sports centers, etc. rank third
among the most popular Kuwait check-in locations
• Malls and shopping centers were hand down the most popular place to
check-in in UAE, but you already know that
What are consumers
doing?
October had the highest
check-ins | February had
the lowest
Check-ins in 2017 per month:
JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT
10%
9%9%9%9%
8%8%8%
7% 7%7%
8%
NOV JAN
On average a person checks-in almost 13 times a year, that’s at least
once a month. We even saw cases where an individual checked-in
up to 3,500 times!
Another interesting find is 14% of people who checked-in in one
country, have also checked-in at least once in another in the region,
indicating these people are travelers…who would have known!

6. Top checked-in categories for each country
Kuwait
KSA
UAE
Egypt
Qatar
Oman
Bahrain
Top 3 check in
habits (per country)

7. Hottest brands/places
people check-in at
Hottest brands/places
people check-in at
Cafes and Restaurants
Educational institutions Hotels and Resorts
Malls

8. Starbucks is absolutely
killing it
Cafes/restaurants amount over half of check-ins in GCC, these are
some hungry people! Rankings are as follows
Starbucks emoji cloud: Cloud shows emojis lean more towards
positivity and loving coffee & the brand
Starbucks mentions account for about two thirds of all of the above
check-ins, we do love our coffee!
Starbucks is also the highest checked-in brand out of all cafes &
restaurants for all countries.
The Gulf really loves Starbucks’ coffee and have a deep love for the
brand, even the majority of the broken hearts used do not refer to
the brand but refer to studying at Starbucks or a longing for
the brand!

9. What’s all the fuss about
education?
Emoji cloud for American University of the Middle East
The American University of the Middle East tops the list and is way
ahead of others. We dug in a bit deeper for AUM; the emoji cloud
shows the most used emoji was a broken heart that was associated
with being late, talk about exams, etc.
Students there must have it hard.
The most checked-in location for Bahrain was the King Fahd
Causeway (Approx. 1.2K) and if we take a look at Twitter profiles’
location, we can see that about half of these people are coming from
Saudi Arabia. It seems that Saudis are really keen on broadcasting
their arrival to Bahrain.
It is also interesting to see the flow of check-ins in this area; hot
spots are noted at Khobar especially on the Prince Faisal Bin
Fahd Road.
Roads? Yes, a lot of people
check-in at roads
Roads check-ins @ KSA & Bahrain: Larger volume and spread
out in KSA compared to Bahrain. Noticeable increase in volume
specifically at King Fahd Causeway

10. Office check-ins were the second most popular form of check-in for Oman.
We were interested to dig a few feet deeper so we decided to see what
time of day people check-in at. Office check-ins were somewhat in line
with normal working hours, lots of people start checking-in at 6-8AM and
gradually decreases to 1PM, remains steady from 2PM to 8PM and then
drops. Comparing this to each country, we noticed some interesting finds
• 73% of all office check-ins were from KSA, we assumed we would see
lots from Kuwait due to their high volume of check-ins but apparently
office check-ins aren’t that popular
• God be with the Kuwaitis, these guys check-in from 6AM all the way to
midnight consistently. KSA shares a similar pattern but less people are
seen to check-in after hours
• UAE are the early birds of the group; these guys start from 6AM (about 2
hours earlier than average)
• Egyptians strictly abide by the working hours, we haven’t seen a single
check-in outside the 8AM – 4PM window.
9 to 5 job, I don’t think so…
Office check-ins by hour: Data from all countries
12am
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
1am 2am 3am 4am 5am 6am 7am 8am 9am 10am 11am 12pm 1pm 2pm 3pm 4pm 5pm 6pm 7pm 8pm 9pm 10pm 11pm
KSA office check-ins
12am
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
1am 2am 3am 4am 5am 6am 7am 8am 9am 10am 11am 12pm 1pm 2pm 3pm 4pm 5pm 6pm 7pm 8pm 9pm 10pm 11pm
Kuwait office check-ins
12am
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
1am 2am 3am 4am 5am 6am 7am 8am 9am 10am 11am 12pm 1pm 2pm 3pm 4pm 5pm 6pm 7pm 8pm 9pm 10pm 11pm

11. UAE office check-ins
12am
5
10
15
20
25
1am 2am 3am 4am 5am 6am 7am 8am 9am 10am 11am 12pm 1pm 2pm 3pm 4pm 5pm 6pm 7pm 8pm 9pm 10pm 11pm
Egypt check-ins
12am
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1am 2am 3am 4am 5am 6am 7am 8am 9am 10am 11am 12pm 1pm 2pm 3pm 4pm 5pm 6pm 7pm 8pm 9pm 10pm 11pm
TV addicts and binge
watching
We noticed that KSA has the highest number of people who were
checking-in while watching a movie or TV show. We wanted to know
what time of day these check-ins happen and found that movies/
TV shows in Kuwait for example are from 4PM to 1AM, while KSA
apparently watch movies throughout the day with peaks between
9PM all the way to 4AM!
KSA Check-ins while watching a movie/TV show by hours of the day
12am
5
10
15
20
25
1am 2am 3am 4am 5am 6am 7am 8am 9am 10am 11am 12pm 1pm 2pm 3pm 4pm 5pm 6pm 7pm 8pm 9pm 10pm 11pm

12. Top TVShows for allcountries:
The most popular TV shows people checked-in while watching
were Prison Break, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead and Rick
and Morty. We also noted that the sheer volume of check-ins was
because people were binge watching these shows, checking in
every few days between every season to let the world know
their progress.
Apparently Path.com was their check-in preference for this category
of check-ins
#1 Prison Break #2 Game of
Thrones
#3 The Walking
Dead
#4 Rick and
Morty
Check-ins were highest at Kuwait and KSA respectively, there seems to
be no correlation between population size and total check-ins.
Check-ins are really big here; an average person checks-in more than
once a month, some people take it to another level and check-in over 9
times a day.
Swarmapp was much more popular than Path.
The majority of check-ins were at cafes/restaurants with Starbucks
coming on top for all countries.
Starbucks check-ins were also associated with mainly positive
sentiments and brand loyalty.
Road Check-ins were big for Bahrain; surges of check-ins were noted at
the King Fahd Causeway mainly by Saudis heading to Bahrain.
Office check-ins were popular for some countries but not all, Saudis had
highest work check-ins, Kuwaitis check-in later than most, UAE are early
birds, and Egyptians abide by working hours.
KSA checked-in while watching movies much more than other countries
and peak mainly from 9PM to 4AM, Prison Break was the most popular
TV show for all countries.
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research, contact research@hugdigital.com’
Conclusion