How hotels, airlines and online travel companies can monetize buzz on social networks

2010-07-08T04:49:00.000-07:00

The biggest difference between social media and traditional media is the level of personalization. Social media, unlike traditional media channels, represent a unique way of transmitting information in all directions, not just “one-way” and “top-down”.

Social media is highly personal and interactive -- it's a two-way, interactive form of communication in real time. Traditional media is not. People on these platforms generate and share information in their networks, which is very vital from a word of mouth marketing perspective in travel and tourism industry.

Their existing as well as potential customers spend a significant amount of their daily time on these platforms communicating with their friends and followers. To target this huge base, online travel companies actively promote their offers and share information with their fans and followers.

However, the way these companies are approaching and leveraging social networks is still limited to information sharing with direct sales approach like a typical sales person.

They are either tweeting or sharing their latest offers or using these platforms to directly cater to customer requests.

All these practices have become the table stakes now when every second company is doing this…so what is the next step?

Is it…introducing an interesting campaign that catches the attention of many Tweetples and Facebookers and instantly transforms into a viral campaign. People start sharing it within their network and fan following & buzz branding of the company gets an instant spike. Most of these social media marketing campaigns today are limited to creating brand buzz; not to forget a considerable amount of this hoopla sometimes gets converted into sales too but yes with huge investment.

Interesting…so am I suggesting that if we try to take engagements to the next level beyond offers and customer service, it should be campaigns???? Not really, the question is till when…after a limited period this campaign becomes stale or ends.

Plus companies will always have to be dependent on agencies to come up with innovative campaigns regularly, not to forget the huge costs associated with it with no guarantee of the success.

Then what…

Going back to the USP of social networks, ‘A unique way of transmitting information in all directions, not just “one-way” and “top-down i.e. a two-way, interactive form of communication in real time”; the essence is the communication between people. There are communities, networks and in fact people connect with like-minded individuals.

On the contrary in all these practices, what is happening is companies are talking to their direct fans and followers; most of the communication is monologue. Hence the interest and brand loyalty keeps on shifting.

Plus I found some interesting stats that further validated my views on why this monologue thing is not offering an ROI from social media marketing.

76% of consumers don’t believe that companies tell the truth in advertisements (Source: Yankelowich)
89% trust the recommendations of other consumers in the travel industry (Source: Forrester Research / Intelliseek)
52% don’t trust the website that sells the travel (Source: Benchmark Group)

No matter how interesting these offers are customers either don’t trust the company or don’t get excited. Hence the interest and brand loyalty keeps on shifting. They prefer information from real people who are unbiased and can give them genuine advice. They look for experienced travelers, opinions, feedbacks and recommendations, thanks to sites like Tripadvisor.com.

Contrary to the belief that lowest fair is the main deciding factor, Benchmark Group found that only 36% people think price as most important for their travel buying. Customers are aware that experience and comfort costs more and most of the time are ready to pay extra for that value added “EXPERIENCE”.

The next step>>>>

The stepping stones for the next level are:

1) Brand Ambassadors

There would be several people on social platforms who regularly talk good things about your company.

These are the people who either have a brand preference by hearing good things about your company or have personally experienced and liked the services.

They love to share their experiences in their networks… Identify them as your brand ambassadors from your existing base of fans, followers and customers.

2) Experience Sharing

They are already writing good reviews and sharing their experiences within their networks, but on a random basis.

Acknowledge this valuable effort of theirs and start building relationship with them by encouraging them to create buzz on your brand on a regular basis. Start sharing interesting offers with them by posting on their walls or sending emails.

Ask them to forward your offers to their network and recommend your company to their friends, families and contacts on sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn etc. But don't forget to incentivize them. After all nothing comes for free. ;)

3) Word of mouth marketing

The brand ambassadors will transform your existing communication from a monologue to a broadcast. Encourage them to recommend your brand to their family and friends and acquire new fans and followers by building a powerful recommendation and experience sharing network. When they share their experiences and recommendations, this BUZZ will start converting into sales at a much quicker pace.

Theoretically this sounds interesting and convincing; however practically there are several bottlenecks to implement this innovative strategy.

If you are interested to execute this and would like to know how you can implement this strategy for your brand, please feel free to drop me a note and I can demonstrate how to do it.

You can get in touch with me at
nishith.srivastava@rategain.com.

How Travelocity, Expedia and TripAdvisor are leveraging social media

2010-07-05T01:08:00.000-07:00

“Everyone’s using and talking about social media marketing these days” has become a clichéd statement these days. With the growing trend, people are more interested to know how specific sectors and companies are leveraging social networks.

In the last few months, besides FMCG and retail brands I have noticed some interesting ways of leveraging these platforms specially by travel and hospitality companies. I came across an interesting article by Rik Fairlie, the famous tech blogger. Rik has covered consumer electronics and technology products and trends for numerous publications, including The New York Times, CNET, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Computer Shopper, where he was editor in chief. He has also written extensively about the social and consumer side of the Web, as well as the business of technology. Prior to writing about technology, Rik wrote for various travel magazines.

In this interesting article he has covered interesting case examples on

‘How OTAs exploit social media’

Here are some of the main points that caught my attention:

Preeminent online travel sites like Travelocity, Expedia, as well as TripAdvisor, are piggybacking on social networking to direct more and more travelers to their sites.

TripAdvisor, which gets 35 million traveler reviews, created the Trip Friends application on Facebook which harnesses the concept of Facebook's social graph to enable trip planners to get travel reviews and ask questions to trusted friends.
The Facebook social graph aggregates all available information—places your friends have visited and lived, for instance—and generate a list of friends with knowledge of a particular destination. More than 500,000 people are now using Facebook Connect on TripAdvisor.

Travelocity, the second largest online travel agency (OTA), has an exceptional spokesman for its social networking: its popular Roaming Gnome mascot. It recently launched a campaign that gives fans of the Gnome’s Facebook page, exclusive discounts. The page also has a Travel Deals tab that plots hotel and flight promotions on a U.S. map, displaying specific packages from your home airport without leaving the Facebook site. If you decide to book a trip, you are directed to Travelocity's site.

Travelocity has leveraged Facebook to engage its fans to vote in contests to decide the most popular vacation spots—and promote air and hotel deals to those destinations.

It has more than 29,000 followers on Twitter and has regional accounts that enable it to more effectively target the right destinations for users. It also uses Twitter to send out promotional codes for breaking travel deals, as well as for customer service initiatives.

Expedia uses Twitter for the same purpose and maintains 28,000 followers. It also flags "hidden gems" that are hand-picked by company employees and may be overlooked by site visitors, who are intently focused on searching for components of a specific trip they are planning.
It counts around 11,400 fans on its Facebook fan page. The company sends these fans deals every day and points users to its TripTips blog, written by Expedia staff. But it also uses Facebook to build a community of reader comments and feedback about travel opinions and tips.

Pushing a coupon to travelers carrying smart phones with GPS capabilities, present in close proximity of the stores is another rising trend.

Future plans of the OTAs:

Travelocity is working on a campaign to include the Roaming Gnome on FourSquare.
Expedia and TripAdvisor are working on the development of location-based services.
TripAdvisor is carefully watching the augmented reality space waiting for the users’ response to the new technology before going ahead with it. But for now it is concentrating on building an app for Android devices expected this summer.

To read more….please click here

The Social Media Marketing in Hotel & Travel Sector Blog

How hotels, airlines and online travel companies can monetize buzz on social networks

How Travelocity, Expedia and TripAdvisor are leveraging social media