IN-DEPTH: Interview with Frederick Buhr, VP e-Business, Rail Europe

Published: 11 Jan 2011

IN-DEPTH: Interview with Frederick Buhr, VP e-Business, Rail Europe

The amount of content consumption taking place on the top social networking sites continues to grow at a rapid pace.

Travel companies plan to continue developing new methods of connecting with customers, with social media and mobile coming top of the channels targeted for growth. According to digital marketing specialist Bigmouthmedia’s 2011 Travel Report, enthusiasm for the nascent social media and mobile channels is set to continue unabated, with social strategies taking a larger share of budgets than direct email marketing for the first time.

Despite such positive plans, which areas does the travel industry needs to focus upon?

For instance, it is said that many travel companies, including ones in the online travel sector, have yet to capitalise on social media’s ability to not only listen to customers, but analyse conversations and turn the information into bottom-line benefit. According to SAS, many organisations cling to old paradigms, using social media for one-way flow of marketing messages, instead of capitalising on the opportunity to monitor, analyse, and participate in millions of conversations among consumers.

In order to gauge the current trends and sentiments, EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta spoke to Frederick Buhr, VP e-Business, Rail Europe. Excerpts:

What do you really make of content consumption on social networking sites from the travel industry’s perspective?

Looking at our web analytics reports we do not see a significant influence of FB or Youtube to deliver traffic to our B2C web sites. What we see is that 50 percent of our FB interactions are with customers and are related to support or service. 30 percentage from planners asking questions about a coming trip and the rest is composed of dreamers and shoppers not sure what to choose as a mode of transportation from point A to point B. Based on these data, I would safely assume that our websites are driving traffic and fueling interactions on our FB page! Not the contrary…

What do you think the travel industry is currently focusing upon when it comes to various social media platforms/ tools to enhance travel planning and bookings? For instance, a couple of months ago a social media application was introduced to raise awareness of European rail travel.

We’re glad that our FB app is getting interest from the industry. Focus groups and online surveys showed us that our customers had vague notions about time and distance between cities in Europe. Rather than build this app on our home page where only planners investigating rail travel would use it, we wanted to expose the app to a broader audience and thought FB was the best place to start. To be best of my knowledge there are no readily accessible tools that allow this type of comparison. Just looking at a map is no indication of travel times due to traffic congestion, topography etc. We hope that we have succeeded in giving travel planners a new tool to evaluate the right type of transportation for their travel needs.

Of course, some results are not advantageous to the train but rail travel has other advantages as promoted in our web sites.

Next, we are looking into deploying this application on the iPhone for when customers are in Europe. My team would also love to build an app that compares pricing for the different mode of transportation but the APIs currently available are all fee based and we would not secure enough ROI to justify such an investment for the moment..

Many travel companies, including ones in the online travel sector, have yet to capitalise on social media’s ability to not only listen to customers, but analyse conversations and turn the information into bottom-line benefit. How do you expect such initiatives to shape up?

RailEurope has been at the forefront of social media since 2008 when we launched our first FB campaign. In 2009, we have hired a social media agency to help us build a cross departmental approach to social media. The same year, we recruited a full time resource for the online marketing team that handles everything social media.

Currently, about 50 percent of the interactions with users on Twitter or Facebook are related to product support, customer service or general inquiries about train travel in Europe.

Historically, these inquiries used to only come through the phone or via email and be handled by the Contact Center and customer support teams.

The rise of social media has changed all this and different resources are now involved in answering product questions, helping users plan their European itineraries, assisting customers looking to get refunds, and handling a multitude of customer service inquiries.

We don’t think it’s the right approach as the requests coming from FB and Twitter require a high level of product knowledge and customer service expertise to efficiently deal with the kind of customer service requests. In addition, we have found that responding to customer service inquiries through our corporate Facebook or Twitter account tends to devalue the appeal of those marketing channels because other twitter users who follow us have to put up with messages coming out of our corporate accounts that are directed to a specific user and are of little interest to the general public.

As a consequence, we have implemented the following initiatives:

• Open a new Twitter account solely dedicated to answering customer service inquiries and product questions
• The main Twitter account will only focus on building brand awareness and broadcasting marketing messages
• The Online Marketing team will focus its efforts on managing the main corporate Twitter account
• The customer service Twitter account will be managed by expert resources within one of the company’s customer service groups
• Customer support questions will be handled by expert resources within RailEurope customer service group.

Travel companies have made it possible to complete an entire booking straight from their respective Facebook pages, without leaving Facebook or having to visit any other website. Recently, travel search engine Mobissimo launched the first vertical travel search application available within Facebook. How do you think e-commerce on Facebook is going to shape up in the next 12 months?

I think travel companies should all build a FB booking app just to test the water. It’s easy to deploy and measure. Are we going to see a shift from booking on a FB app instead of the corporate site? No! Customers need a lot of information about the products and the services before booking and this information needs constant updating. Corporate web sites, which are also an application on the Internet after all, are best fitted to contain and maintain that type of information which have also legal ramifications.

Last year, you described social media sites and their features as “share engines”. You said they are now on equal footing with the “search engines” in all key touch points within the customer buying cycle. But a survey recently indicated that the perceived credibility of the content of social media is low relative to the degree of credibility ascribed to other sources of information travelers typically consult when making destination and travel service supplier decisions. How do you assess the situation going forward as far as travel planning process is concerned?

I am surprised that travel planners gives less credit to information found on social networks than on search engines, after all they should trust their friends over an algorithm! Or maybe not…It is the old “objectivity” vs. “subjectivity” debate. I guess the fact that the search results are analyzed, vetted and ranked by an algorithm gives them more objectivity than a hotel recommendation from a friend. In my opinion they should be both important, we will see how customers’ perception evolves over time.

It is often mentioned that search generally offers a better ROI. The opportunity for social networks is to offer more advanced targeting, based not just on the stated likes and interests of their users, but on inferred preference data. What do you make of this capability of social networking sites?

I don’t think the “share engines” will ever reach the RoI of the “search engines” in terms of strict cost of sales.

Maybe social media should be more considered as a traditional marketing channel such as TV, Radio or print and its ROI measures “the old fashioned way”, by establishing a baseline of traffic and sales with before and after results. We could even use the old FRY (Frequency, Reach, Yield) measurement out of the playbook from Madison Avenue.

The major problem with FRY is that it only measures accurately in a vacuum the size of the electron-positron collider. What about all the other marketing channels? Do we need to stop utilizing them while measuring the effect of social media so their (large) impact does not pollute our experience?

I don’t think it’s the right solution, furthermore it could undermine the foundation of online marketing as the most trackable sales channel ever created.

Just for the sake of measuring social media, digital marketing should not grow an obscure side but find ways to measure “positive” or “negative” comments and that could benefit KPI dashboards as much as strict ROI.

Google Social Search is designed to help users discover publicly available web content from your social circle online. What do you make of developments pertaining to “real-time” Social Search from the travel industry’s perspective?

I think real time search is great to get last minute deals, travel alerts and any urgent information that could “make” or “break” a vacation.

When it comes to traffic from social media, it is being said that the challenge for companies is still how to successfully use social media without infringing on what was previously considered a community space. For those brands that get it right, the rewards can be exceptional, says Hitwise.. For example, BlackBerry now receives more traffic from social networks than search engines largely because of the brand's commitment to engage with consumers online. What’s your take on this?

It’s hard to pitch to a customer that is just dreaming about a vacation without being labeled an intruder and tarnish a commercial reputation.

Recommendations and tips from friends are the ideal vehicles at that stage in the booking cycle if a brand does a good job in the market place, its reputation will be carried over into social media. So it’s not what social media can do for you it’s what you can do to get positive reviews on social media that counts.

Social Media Strategies for Travel USA 2011

Frederick Buhr, VP e-Business, Rail Europe is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Social Media Strategies for Travel USA 2011 conference, to be held in San Francisco next year (March 2-3, 2011).

For more information, click here

Or contact:
Gina Baillie
VP Global Marketing & Events
EyeforTravel
London, UK: +44 (0)207 375 7197
gina@eyefortravel.com