Royal Holidays in April Generate Enthusiasm on Twitter

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Guest Post by: Monica Esposito

What’s better than a royal wedding to lift up the spirits of the nation? A royal wedding with an extra holiday bonus, of course.

Following the announcement that Prince William’s and Kate Middleton’s wedding will be held on 29th April 2011 and this day will be celebrated with a Bank holiday, the UK public will be able to enjoy two long weekends in a row, with a three-day working week in between; this basically means that, in order to get time off between Thursday 21 April and Tuesday 3 May, it will be necessary to take just three days holiday allowance.

Following the announcement,  the Twitterverse responded in a hugely enthusiastic manner. An analysis of the conversation about the Royal Wedding Bank holiday with Market Sentinel’s Skyttle Realtime gives interesting results in this sense; for example, the top three sentiment words are “nice”, “happy” and “excellent”:

Some relevant tweets:

Extra bank holiday next year confirmed. Nice work Wills and Cameron” (LizBeswick);

Yeah!!! Extra bank holiday next year Fri April 29th,nice one Wills and Kate!” (mattyb1976).

A lot of people seem to be planning in advance and booking their holidays; according to Condé Nast Traveller, the royal wedding date sparked a “holiday rush”:

Thanks Wills and Kate for the extra Bank Holiday! That’s 2 4-day wkds in a row. Asia trip perhaps? Maybe I’ll see Goal #China? #royalwedding” (GoalGirlsGlobal)

Am very pleased the #royalwedding is happening on my husband’s birthday. Bonus bank holiday = birthday trip to Amsterdam” (RoseWills)

RT @enjoysussex: Ooooo, an extra Bank Holiday for the royal wedding on the 29th April. Fancy a weekend away? www.enjoysussex.info” (Danielle Crane).

And for those who decide not to go abroad and stay at home, it seems that the prime destination will be, in very English style, the pub:

RT @ukpubs: Royal Wedding promises bumper week for pub trade – Govt confirms extra Bank Holiday as wedding date announced http://t.co/HPfqNsA #ukpubs” (CarlyCyd).

It’s not all hearts and flowers, however. Some users wanted to point out that there was another side to the coin and the extra holiday day would be expensive for the British economy (hence the sentiment work “boring” in the list): “RT @faisalislam Thought Royal Wedding going to add 1bn to UK econ? In 2007 CBI said extra Bank Holiday would cost 6bn >boring boring” (undefined). There is also a bitter sense of irony, reflective of the current unemployment situation: “I like the way the cabinet assume we’ll all still have jobs to take this extra bank holiday #royalwedding” (karrade).

Original Post: http://www.marketsentinel.com/blog/2010/11/royal-holidays-in-april-generate-enthusiasm-on-twitter/