FreshNetworks Blog

According to a recent report in Travel Mole, the travel and tourism industry is facing a social media revolution.

The Social Travel Report, carried out by independent media agency Total Media, has found that almost 70% of consumers surveyed use the internet to book their holidays, compared to 23% by phone and just 8% in-store with travel agents.

Those seeking to go away on a break trust complete strangers more than recommendations from the travel industry itself, and most British holidaymakers see the internet as an extension of the word-of-mouth recommendations they receive from friends and family.

Online reviews on social networking sites like Facebook,  or travel websites like TripAdvisor, are now more influential than brochures, advertising, travel supplements and travel agents. And travellers are willing to write reviews, as well as be influenced by them – almost one in every three UK holidaymakers over the age of 16 has written an online review.

Perhaps surprising to some, it is a slightly older generation of consumers who are leading the travel social media revolution. 16-24 year olds are the most likely age group to visit a travel agent, while 74% of the 35-44 year olds who were surveyed use travel websites to book their holiday online.

So in order to regain lost ground, it seems that the more traditional travel and tourism operators need to become more social. Aside from developing a sustainable social media strategy, perhaps a more general message in this age of increased online conversation and heightened word-of-mouth is to engage with customers, not advertise to them.  Share things that would be of interest, encourage them to review your products and offerings, and interact with them online on a regular basis. By bonding with customers through social media, rather then bombarding them with information and sales messages, perhaps more traditional travel operators can enjoy the success of some of their online counterparts.

Some more reading

• Death of the travel brochure as holidaymakers opt for online reviews (telegraph.co.uk)
• Online Reputation Management in the Hotel Industry (blogs.praized.com)
• Facebook and Twitter Change Travel Trends (travelinsurance.org)

Like many people I will be travelling later today. Taking one of the last trains on Christmas Eve from London to the north of England. And like many people I have spent the last few days checking the weather and the news, hoping that my train will run and I will make it on time.

Christmas is a time when lots of people travel, and a time when lots of travel gets delayed, cancelled or goes wrong. That perfect storm of high volume of travellers and some of the worst weather of the year. In the UK we’ve seen a lot of travel-related issues recently: the story of the Eurostar cancellations is well documented online, flights, trains and the road is also disrupted .

We’ve posted already this week about what this means for the travel industry and in particular how to use social media as a crisis management tool. But there is another role that social media can play – as a useful, up-to-date and real-time information source for the people travelling. Official information sources can be useful for things like departure times or changes to routes, but they don’t necessarily tell you the full story and, critically, rarely give you advice on what to do.

So here are five ways you can use social media to stay on top of your travel plans this Christmas:

1. Use Twitter to find out what’s happening, now. Twitter is as much a search engine as a social media tool – one of the benefit of people sending updates and telling us what they are experiencing is that it provides a great real-time resource to find out what is happening from people who are on the ground. When your plane is not leaving and you’re not sure why, you will often find more use from a search of Twitter than the departure boards in airports. I personally find it most useful for finding out about travel around London. Whilst the Transport for London site might tell me there are ‘Minor Delays’ on the Piccadilly Line I get into work, a search of Twitter for ‘Piccadilly Line’ will tell me exactly what is happening from people at stations or on trains.
2. Use Twitter Lists to follow official updates. Sometimes you want to know the story from people on the ground, and sometimes you want to know official updates. This is where Twitter Lists come in useful – before you go on a journey, put your airline or train company, breakdown service or road agency into a Twitter List – you then have one place to go for official updates rather than many. And you can separate the official advice from the human stories from people on the ground.
3. Share and search for photo updates. Weather and travel are often very photographic – photos of people trapped queuing at St Pancras station this week waiting to board a Eurostar service convey much better than words ever could the real scale of the delays to the service. As well as updates, share photos of what is happening, show people where you are and what you are doing. Also use photos to educate yourself. Find out how busy that airport really is by looking for photos people have taken of the queues at check in.
4. Update your friends on where you are with Facebook or Twitter. Status updates have many uses but they are particularly useful when you want to tell a large group of people the same thing. If you’re delayed, trapped in snow on a road or at a station waiting for a delayed train, you want people to know you are okay or that you need help. Rather than having to contact lots of people separately, use your status on Facebook, Twitter or another service to keep people up to date on where you are, how you are and also to ask for help when you need it. Mobile internet access makes this possible and is a significant benefit for anybody needing help.
5. Use user-generated weather updates. As with updates on travel, user-generated weather updates are a great source of information of what is really happening, right now, on the ground. Perhaps the best example of this in the UK is a Twitter mash-up: #uksnow map. This uses status updates from people on Twitter who send their postcode area and a rating for how much snow their is out of ten. This data is then used to produce a map of snowfall across the UK. In real-time. From users on the ground.

Social media has changed many things about the way we can live our lives and will continue to do so. Travel and weather are two cases where users can get real benefit from using social media to do old things in new ways and to do completely new things. Whether you want to get real-time information, information from people on the ground or share your own experiences or updates to let people know what is happening. Social media can help make you better informed and better connected when travelling.

I for one know that I am monitoring activity at St Pancras station and on East Midlands Trains. Things look okay so far…

Thomson is a well-known package tour and holiday brand in the UK and part of the global travel group TUI. They have a good reputation and brand in the UK, supported by a relatively strong High Street presence. But one traveller’s bad experience on a holiday to Tunisia has caused them and their brand problems in social media, and in their search rankings.

Andy Sharman went on holiday to Tunisia with Thompson in June this year and had, by his own account, a fairly disappointing time. After his complaints failed to receive a response that satisfied him, Andy wrote about his experiences on his blog.

Whatever the truth of what Andy was told or what happened to him in Tunisia is not important. For your brand, and your business, satisfaction is a balance of expectations and reality as seen by the customer. Andy was unhappy and he wanted to complain.

Using traditional media, this complaint would have taken a fairly standard path all of which is done in private:

1. Customer complains to Brand (by telephone or by letter)
2. Brand responds to Customer (typically by letter)
3. Customer is either delighted (and may then tell their friends and colleagues in person) or dissatisfied (and will also tell their friends and colleague, but this time a very different story)

With social media, this pattern has been disrupted quite severely. Rather than a private exchange between Customer and Brand, the first few steps are public from the very beginning. From the minute the customer wants to complain their thoughts, experiences and attitudes (whether justified or not) are public knowledge. The brand’s job is no longer to assess and respond to a single complaint, but to manage an attack on their brand reputation. It is now bigger than just customer service.

With social media, complaints have moved from being a customer service issue to being a branding and corporate reputation one.

Andy’s blog shows exactly how serious these complaints can be. Within a couple of months his post had been read by over 10,000 different people and, perhaps more worryingly, was appearing above Thomson’s own sites for searches on Google for terms relating to Thomson and Tunisia.

Blogs, and social media more generally, are a great way for people to distribute their content. They can get it seen by a large number of people who can link to it, comment on it and reproduce it on their own sites.  Very quickly a brand has a story that is no longer private and is also no longer contained. Other people have linked to or reproduced the complaint on their own sites and forums. Some publicly and others in places that even Thompson cannot see.

So, what should brands do in this instance. Earlier this year we wrote about how to react if somebody writes about your brand online and included a great process diagram developed by the US Air Force. The process is simple and clear, showing when you should respond (and when you shouldn’t) and how you should respond if you do.

The most important thing for a brand to do is to engage in the same media that the complaint is made in. Have good buzz tracking and monitoring in place so that you pick up on potential issues early and then respond through the same media – be that by commenting on a blog, joining a forum, responding in Twitter or on Facebook. When you do respond (and if this is appropriate) you should consider  five things:

1. Be transparent about who you are and your role. Give your name and some means of contacting you
2. If you want to refute some claims in the post only do so if you can source your side of the story
3. Be timely, but make sure you give yourself enough time to get a real response together
4. Respond in a tone and manner that reflects your brand
5. Focus on those blogs that carry the most influence

Customers are using social media to turn what were once private complaints with the brand into public discussions. Brands can capitalise upon this if they respond in the same manner, in the same public forum. This is the best way to take back some control of the situation and to begin to restore your brand’s reputation online.

I recently chaired a roundtable on social media in the travel industry for Travel Trade Gazette where agents, providers and those working in PR in the travel industry discussed best practice use of social media and also what they hoped and thought would happen in the future.

The travel industry is a great place for social media innovation, as is seen by the many examples of online communities in the travel industry. Consumers tend to search for information and advice before making a purchase and want advice from people that they recognise as being like them. If these people like that particular hotel, resort or country, then I might too. And travel is an industry which generates a lot of stories, media and experiences, which are perfect for people to share with others. So people are looking for information to help make their purchase, and other people are generating a lot of stories, pictures and media. If organisations get it right, travel should offer a real opportunity for innovative and effective use of social media.

This week’s Required Reading at FreshNetworks comes from David Griner, and looks at how the role of the traveler has changed with social media (and the rise of what Griner refers to as the Traveler 2.0) and at how organisations in the industry can use social media to leverage this growing breed. The basic advice is the simplest (and best): encourage customers to share their stories, interact with them when they are doing it and start your own stories.

The presentation is below and is great for it’s look at how traveler (and consumer) habits have changed, but especially for a wealth of examples of great use of social media in the travel industry.

There are many examples of big brands in social media (in fact you can find a whole range across different industries in our online community examples), but at the Marketing 2.0 conference in Paris it was great to hear some real case studies from the people behind these strategies and campaigns.

Two presentations that particularly stood out were from Scott Monty at Ford and Paula Berg from Southwest Airlines. Both have a strong history of customer engagement and have been, to some extent, pioneers in their use of social media and online communities. And both of their presentations were refreshing in terms of the information they shared. For me, four core themes came from what they said:

1. It’s about people not firms – social media is about people engaging with people, and firms that want to engage with them all also need a personal touch. You should put faces on the individual people who make up your brand and let people see and engage with them. Of course, from the brand’s perspective it is best to do this is a way that is sustainable even when the individuals leave the firm.
2. Make things public – social media is a about sharing and it provides a real platform for firms to share their knowledge and information. In fact, Scott Monty told us that Ford, as part of its social media strategy, shared with the public anything that used to appear on its intranet that was not commercially sensitive. This seems to be a great approach – social media and online communities are about openness and honesty. Brands who are open and honest will be most successful.
3. Connect with people where they are already – don’t make it difficult for people to find and connect with your brand. Rather provide them a route, a way to connect with you. As Scott Monty said “every obstacle we put in the way closes a distribution channel”. The best examples of social media marketing, and the best online communities also engage people where they are – be that on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter or blogs. They engage them and then provide an easy route for them to engagement.
4. Provide a place for people to go to – whilst engaging people where they are is important, you need to provide something for them to do once you have engaged them and the best examples of big brands in social media provide a place for these people to go to. An online community, web site or other activity that you drive people to where they can really engage with you on a site that you provide and where you benefit from the engagement as much as the consumer does.

Read all of our posts based on the Marketing 2.0 Conference here.

Some more reading

• Social Media Marketing: Time Trap or Opportunity Magnet? New Study Reveals the Answers (buildabetterblog.com)
• Big brands on Twitter (wheelontheweb.wordpress.com)
• Innovators in Social Media (businessweek.com)