SOCIAL media is always a hot topic within the travel and tourism industry and organisations have been making great strides within this arena to promote their destinations, hotels, and airlines with significant and tangible results.
The Turkish Culture and Tourism Office took the opportunity at World Travel Market to host several speakers to discuss social media’s best practices and present a variety of case studies. The session was organised by Travel Perspective and sponsored by Sabre.
Starting with Dr. Emmanuel Kaldis, co-founder and business architect of YouTect, a company which provides social intranet solutions for the hospitality division, a case study was presented to showcase the results of collaboration through the use of the intranet product. The requirement for the online platform came to light when seven hotels in the Athens Riviera joined forces following a spate of robberies that had affected them. It was thought that if communication had been better between the properties, some of these robberies could have been prevented.
YouTect got involved in order to provide an online tool to support business collaboration. The intranet site goes beyond normal social media tools such as Facebook and LinkedIn thanks to its additional functionality and personalisation options. Including platforms for idea management, candidate and supplier directories, reports, and newsletters, the hotels were able to liaise and support each other and as a result increased productivity among staff by 26 per cent more revenue per employee while profitability increased by five per cent in customer defection.
Demonstrating an agency perspective, Sarah Rathbone from Siren Communications, looked at how social media can be used within the industry to show brand personality, build relationships, inspire customers and receive feedback. Following their recent success with client Celebrity Cruise, Siren put together a strategy based on partnering with bloggers. As most people visit up to 22 websites before booking a holiday, five bloggers were used to tell stories of the company and extend the online reach of the organisation. As a result, the company received 130,000 new twitter fans.
Finally, TripAdvisor, one of the world’s largest travel websites, concluded the session to offer advice and suggestions on how organisations can make the most of the website. With 260 million unique monthly visitors and over 70 traveller contributions per minute, it is one of the top influences when it comes to making travel plans. Thirtyfour sites worldwide in 21 languages also mean a truly global perspective on what travellers are looking for. Ways in which hotels, restaurants, destinations, and attractions can improve their presence on TripAdvisor are numerous and include registering with the management centre, encouraging reviews, writing management responses (84 per cent) of respondents say an appropriate management response to a bad review improves their impression of the hotel), managing the listing, and participating in the forums and travel articles.
Interestingly, 4.08 (out of 5.0) is the average review score on TripAdvisor with 78 per cent of respondents saying seeing a hotel management response to a review makes them believe they care more about their guests. Respondents to the study also emphasised the importance of the forums, using them to receive the best and most accurate information for the destination. With 98 per cent of forum posts replied to in under 24 hours, TripAdvisor is an excellent example of the speed at which travellers are demanding relevant information.
The debate argued whether social media was appropriate for the travel and tourism industry, especially for the luxury sector. The presentation highlighted a variety of success stories using a number of measurement criteria depending on the client objective. It’s clear that the debate has now passed as social media becomes more and more critical for the sector and travellers move online to share their experiences.
By Karen Osman