Travel and Social Media

There was an interesting story on Travel Mole recently that cited a Forrester report about online travel. In the report, Forrester discusses several topics, including the rather alarming (to the industry) fact that there's been a noticeable decline in the number of people who do both research and bookings online.

This would seem to fly in the face of the general trend we have witnessed, of greater general usage of online mechanisms to book travel, when measured in terms of dollars. As such, it would definitely come as a surprise to some. But not, I would think, to those that have been paying close attention to the "web 2.0" phenomenon.

With the advent of consumer-generated media (CGM) and the associated social aspects of this media, it was only a matter of time before consumers started to listen to each other more than they listened to anyone trying to sell them anything. The smart players have realized this for a long-time,and have created features - or entire sites - to take advantage of the fact. Not just enabling the discourse between consumers, but actively mining the conversations for insight. Amazon is a case in point.

Unfortunately, the travel industry has been been late to the game in providing features to consumers (or even suppliers) that allow for consumer review, opinions, and networking. It would seem to me that this has lead to consumers going elsewhere to satisfy their need, talking amongst themselves on blogs, social network, and media-sharing sites. Once they have started to look elsewhere for their point of reference, there is little to bring them back in order to conclude a transaction. It's time for the travel industry to realize that they need to ask consumers what they want, and that the easiest way to do this is via CGM and social networks - travel being, of course, a primarily social activity.

This can be done with the application of a few small but judicious changes in their own online feature-sets, some creative mash-ups, or perhaps the creation of plug-ins for popular CGM sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Typepad, and Blogger. Some of the major players would also be well-served by engaging the services of a company like Visible Technologies to give them insight into what is being said online - regarding their products, competitors, destinations, etc - and what to do about it.

Of course, as the CTO of Visisble Technologies, I am not entirely unbiased ...

:-)

Comments

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