How can travel companies navigate the minefields of the new social media landscape?
Published: 09 Jul 2009
There's no doubt that the rapidly changing social media landscape has had a profound effect on consumer behaviour across the European travel industry. The arrival of a ‘new marketing age’ where consumers are more informed than ever and increasingly seek relationships with companies, mean that travel customers are now looking at travel products and services through new lenses.
The most savvy travel companies are adapting their marketing strategy to retain existing customers, acquire new customers and gain market share. They are relishing the opportunities that social tools and networks provide and are using them to increase brand awareness, generate a ‘buzz’ and perhaps mostly importantly respond to their customers.
‘It’s well known that travel is one of the most talked about subjects on the web. Conversations are happening around travel brands every minute of the day and it’s vital to be a part of the conversation’, Regional Director, Europe, Gina Baillie.
United Airlines is a great example of how a travel company was recently exposed to negative user-generated video coverage. The video ‘United breaks guitars’ is a comedic music video venting the frustration of a guy called Dave Carroll who had his guitar broken on a United Airlines flight and was apparently not compensated. It currently has over 349,647 views and rising. Carroll aims to reach 1 million views and to post two more songs about the incident. He also posted his written story next to the video for all to see.
The video has sparked innumerable discussions on blogs around the world and on Twitter. Just how should United respond to this? It’s a much debated topic but not responding can have far reaching consequences – not least for increasingly frustrated travelling musicians!
A lack of understanding of how to use social tools is another minefield travel companies must avoid. Looking to an example from outside the travel industry, the recent inappropriate use of Twitter hastags by UK department store Habitat shows how damaging it can be when companies launch into using new tools without fully understanding their power and how to use them. The retailer is now under public scrutiny for having tagged its advertising posts on Twitter with keywords - known as hashtags - related to Iran and the country’s political unrest.
Habitat remains unperturbed by the incident however. ‘There is definitely a space for social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter in our web strategy and we will be spending time and energy on further exploring that,” said Jacques Dekock, chief information officer at Habitat.
To go some way towards fully understanding the new social media landscape, companies can refer to the Conversation Prism by Brian Solis. It’s a living, breathing representation of Social Media which, according to Solis, ‘will evolve as services and conversation channels emerge, fuse, and dissipate.’ Companies can also analyse how the new web tool connect by examining the Web Trend Map (based on the Japanese subway system).
Technical analysis isn’t always enough however, and ‘The New Social Media Landscape - What role does social media play in the travel marketing mix?’ will be the title of the keynote session at EyeforTravel’s upcoming Social Media Strategies in Travel conference, 13-14 October in Prague (held as part of EyeforTravel’s annual Sales & Marketing in Travel Summit Europe 2009). Sandra Leonhard, Director of Web Strategy & Business Development for travel giant TUI will join Thorvald Stigsen, CEO, Momondo, Martin Verdon-Roe, Director of Sales, Europe, TripAdvisor to share key insights from their real world experiences.
Finally, here is a great success story on how when social media works – it really works. Evian’s recently ‘Roller Babies’ commercial received over 3.8 million views on You Tube. The babies roller skate around to the track ‘Rapper’s Delight’ by the Sugarhill Gang. Not only is it a hit on You Tube, the video has received a vast amount of free press around the world. It goes without saying that Travel predisposes itself to innovative campaigns and some of the most popular travel company examples on You Tube can be found here from the airline industry.
This article will be followed by a series of articles examining the opportunities and pitfalls of social media and viral marketing for the travel industry in the lead up to EyeforTravel’s Sales & Marketing in Travel Summit 2009. To stay up-to-date subscribe to EyeforTravel’s weekly newsletter and/or follow Gina Baillie (anigba) on Twitter. For full event information see http://events.eyefortravel.com/sales-and-marketing/conference/more-infor... Please note that the lowest priced conference passes for the summit must be booked before Friday 17th July.
Comments
corwinb said on 21 Sep 09:
If you want to continue operating within the car hire uk market you will need to pay particular attention to what people are saying about your brand on various social networking sites. Online brand destruction is now easily achieved through the use of viral videos and websites. They say that all publicity is good publicity, but thats just not true anymore.
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