Recap: Travel in the Social Media Era
July 2nd, 2010 by Jessica Weil
On yesterday’s episode of This Week in Social Media, Mike O’Toole was joined by Adam Medros, VP, Product at TripAdvisor to discuss how social media is becoming an essential communication tool for the travel industry and changing the way we travel. Here are some highlights from the show:
Social media allows you to experience your family’s and friends’ trips in real time. The slideshow presentation after you came back from a trip is iconic, but now you can experience your friends’ trips and vacations along the way thanks to all the tools that are available to share these stories in real time. Everyone loves the feeling of experiencing a trip with someone else, and with blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and digital forums, that’s entirely possible in whole new ways.
Travel has evolved over the past decade. Ten years ago you would walk into a travel agency and they would give you a brochure based on your budget and you had to wonder if that travel agent had ever been to that place and why they were recommending a certain hotel or restaurant. But now with companies such as TripAdvisor and social networks, you have the wisdom of crowds. People you don’t know share their experiences, and that body of information paints a truer picture of what the travel experience really is.
Wisdom of crowds vs. wisdom of friends. TripAdvisor recently introduced a new feature called Trip Friends that enables users to solicit travel advice from Facebook friends along with the site’s reader reviews.
The role of travel agents in the social media era. There is certainly room for travel experts who can work through the logistics and details of a trip. But where the wisdom of crowds or the wisdom of friends really shines is in aggregating these opinions and giving you a real time evaluation of the quality of hotels, restaurants, and attractions as well as insider tips.
The travel industry can benefit from social media. All it takes is a Twitter search or a glance at a TripAdvisor page for hotel General Managers, for example, to identify and respond to problems that they wouldn’t have known existed otherwise.
The powerful impact of social media on the traveler’s purchase decision. A recent study showed that 33% of people consult social networks before making travel plans and that people who find travel information through Facebook are much more likely to book a flight or hotel than if they find it through Google. This user-generated content is one of the most influential aspects of consumers’ travel decisions.
How has social media changed the way you travel?
December 29th, 2010 at 7:31 am
Many thanks for the awsome article. I’ll keep an observation on your own site, i allready saved it to personal list