travel social media (17)

Are Social Media Travel Sites a Bust?

9008791075?profile=originalThe header at Hotelmarketing  was pretty blunt: social media travel sites are screaming for attention-but users and suppliers are not impressed.

According to the latest PhoCusWright data, social media in general generates so little traffic to travel websites it makes anyone wonder if there really is a need for "dedicated social media sites for travel."

In an earlier post at New Media Travel,  we argued that travel marketers were in fact wasting their time on Facebook and Twitter.

Now this rec

Read more…

Is Travel on Twitter Getting Tired?

9008783866?profile=originalLet me get my "conspiracy theory" out here first: Imperialistic, giant players like Google, Twitter, Facebook build  social nets to ensnare us into doing their bidding by populating them to an extreme, which in turn makes big bucks for them. Are we then willing tools of their master plan to do their bidding?

But to lighten up, it may simply be that I'm on social media overload. Or maybe I'm struggling to find relevance with the travel category in Twitter.
But when I look at streams on, say, #so

Read more…

9008767498?profile=originalby Hardie Karges and Kaleel Sakakeeny

(please watch the 1-min Video PostCard below)

Twenty years after the fall of communism, tourism is finally on the rise in Eastern Europe, and for those in the know, it’s the number one tourist destination in the world—cheap, beautiful, and friendly.  So why is it so hard to find a budget hotel in a region where incomes are still only half that of the West?  

Mostly, people are looking in the wrong places. 

The government-related agencies are now deeply i

Read more…

9008842088?profile=original


For a long time now we’ve been preaching how fun and engaging Twitter is…and yet questioned how effective it is when applied to the travel market.

Then along comes a report in HotelMarketing by way of an interesting  account in SproutSocial  highlighting three innovative travel industry success stories on Twitter.

Increasingly, Twitter, it seems, is playing a key role in the critical stages of travel: research, mid-travel engagement and post-trip reviews/feedback.

Of the 25,000 tweets analyz

Read more…

9008829092?profile=original

Travel is measurably one of Facebook’s fastest growing, strongest vertical, and this is the year Facebook will target travel as a major sales initiative.

As we reported in New Media Travel recently, impressively, 52% of the site’s users said that when they view Facebook, they already “started dreaming about a holiday even when they didn’t have one booked. And 95% use Facebook for ‘travel related activities’ prior to going on vacation.”

So what’s the bad news?

“Travel related activities,” may not me

Read more…

9008812654?profile=original

If you’re looking for a sales job in travel, now might be the time to approach Facebook.

The giant social media site is on a mission to elbow its way further into the travel space and has been reorganizing its sales force.

As HotelMarketing reports Facebook has been recruiting for travel sales representatives as it looks to turn travel, one of its fastest growing verticals, in to one of its biggest. Next year, 2014, is the target year.

All those images, and stories and happy travelers’ tales 

Read more…

Place Pins Pushes Pinterest Into Travel


It’s pretty amazing that Pinterest is valued at 3.8 billion dollars, even though it has no revenue. 
But that hasn’t stopped the popular image-driven site from expanding its reach into travel.  

The company, started in 2009, has more traffic from its mobile applications than its website, and co- founder Evan Sharp went so far as to say Pinterest is "probably the last big website...the last start up to become high-profile on the web.”



With the company's recent roll out of Place Pins, the more th

Read more…

9296580884?profile=original

Reviews do matter. A report by SAS noted that positive reviews (less so TripAdvisor-based rank and brand), followed by lower price were the most important influencers of choice.

And lower price or higher ratings don't overcome the impact of negative reviews.

But even in America, it's possible that more isn't better.

Writing reviews is almost a national pastime.  Writing reviews on everything and saying pretty much what we want and being rewarded by some sort of badge or other "atta boy" reco

Read more…

9296580293?profile=originalHow surprising is this: In the second half of last year, fewer that 1% of visitors arrived at a hotel or travel booking site, "via a social media link or a link shared by by a friend. So reports Hotelmarketing.com

Does this mean hotels are wasting their time chasing the Holy Grail of Twitter and Facebook?

Could be. We love our friends' photos and status updates, the report goes on to say, and it's very true that social media platforms and channels do develop loyalty.
The contests do lead to deep

Read more…

9008772889?profile=original

"Big Data" derived from social media has almost become a buzz word in decision-making, product-innovation circles. Now, a report coming out of Amadeus, a technology company that provides IT solutions to the travel and tourism industry, says that Big Data is poised to "shape the future of the travel industry."

Travel would not be possible without Big Data, says Businessinsider.com. We use it every time we get a boarding pass, check the weather for a destination, use our cell phone internationall

Read more…

9008771290?profile=originalIf it's true that 1-minute of video is worth 1.8 million words, then hotels and travel destinations may have found the "holy grail" that converts the grazing online process of looking at hotels, to actually booking them.

And there isn't a hotel or destination in the world that isn't seeking the business alchemy that converts lookers into actual customers.

Generally, the hotel's website is held responsible for making this magic happen.

Of course service that exceeds the client's demands, locat

Read more…

9008761478?profile=original

In essence, travelers will create and share their own travel experience. They, not tourism officials or travel writers, will shape and determine the nature and quality of travel.

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis , Director of the eTourism Lab at Bounemouth University (UK) , tells us what we already intuit: the world "is going to be totally interactive, using personalization, context information and inter-connected devices" that will change the face of travel, already a dynamic, fragmented industry.

Read more…

9008752878?profile=original

We reported frequently in New Media Travel that hotels notoriously use photos of empty swimming pools, restaurants and rooms in their marketing material for fear of offending potential customers. Their thinking is that couples without children, for example, will be discouraged by pictures with children in them, while families may be be turned off by photos  featuring adults.

Enter Socialgraphics which claims the days of travel marketers having only the basic customer information they ask for, a

Read more…

For this year Tnooz shares a study done by Simpliflying where they analyzed the data from a recent EyeforTravel report understanding how travel companies are approaching social media in 2012.

Here are some interesting findings from the study, Social Media and Mobile Strategies for the Travel Industry 2011:

  • Location-based services such as Foursquare will be huge this year. Almost half of all the airlines surveyed wish to increase their presence in location-based social networks in 2012 (they’re goi
Read more…

1. Look Good (=Nice & Simple)

Creative web design is all about making a website visually appealing. A visually appealing website is a site that is easy to read and easy to navigate. To create a site that visitors will not click away from immediately, follow some basic design standards, and think about the usability and accessibility of the design.

 

2. Content is Key

The content on your site is your vehicle to present your message and portray your brand. And if you offer the ability to book online o

Read more…
travelpros.jpg
From NMT Images
Social Media More Influential Than Travel Professionals

It’s not exactly a big surprise, but ReadWriteWeb a popular technology blog, “officially” reported that social media was gaining serious ground in the race with travel experts as an “influencer” in the traveler’s planning process and decisions.

The article gained credibility when it was Retweeted by the big public relations news service, PR Newshound.

The perception that “peer recommendations have overtaken the knowledge of tra
Read more…
social_success.jpg
From From Kaleel

eBags Pushes Travel To Embrace Social Media

Charlene Li, co-author of the groundbreaking books, Groundswell, and Marketing in the Groundswell, (now CEO of Altimeter ) tells the story of Jim, a hard-traveling, hard-nosed computer security engineer whose key zipper on his laptop bag broke at a crucial meeting.

eBags replaced the bag, but they also listened to the review of the product Jim posted on their web site. They contacted him, and went on to improve the bag by getting the Hon
Read more…