Social Media Trends in Toursim

Inspired on the article of David Armano published by on the blog of Harvard Business Publishing I would like to try to reflect  David’s thoughts and reflexions on the tourism sector.

It is very true that in 2009 we saw exponential growth of social media. According to Nielsen Online, Twitter alone grew 1,382% year-over-year in February, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US for the month. Meanwhile, Facebook continued to outpace MySpace. So what could social media look like in 2010? In 2010, social media will get even more popular, more mobile, and more exclusive — at least, that's my guess. What are the near-term trends we could see as soon as next year? In no particular order:

1. Social media begins to look less social
Niche networks are an opportunity for tourism.  For example the newly created Twitter lists and Facebook News Feed hyperactivity are the perfect scene for destinations and tourism related products to provoke more attention and offer  more options to the traveler who seeks for more value. Travelers can change their mind if the feeds they receive are suggesting innovation, service, quality and value for money. The high level of customer interference in those environments may look less social but defiantly this phenomena give us more targeted ways of reaching the end user effectively and more engaging.

2. Corporations look to scale
Hyatt has been one of the first corporations in the tourism industry to assist customers online by creating http://twitter.com/HyattConcierge. This initiative is a clear example of top level and personalized customer care at low personnel cost. This kind of initiatives could hide certain risks in terms of the so called “Social Media Time Wasting” policy corporations may have. On the other hand side, a well structured use of the social media by adequately trained and customer oriented personnel, will defiantly increase in the next few years the levels of service. At the same time the competiveness criteria of tourism destinations - corporations will change and from being the price as criteria we will have the Quality of Service, and the Value for Money.

3. Social business becomes serious play
David mentions Foursquare as an example of social media becoming local and mobile. Foursquare is a US network, so what happens with the rest of the world? I would suggest you  take a tour in Ning. There are thousands of communities created who treat local tourist products and services. Communities of Companies, Destinations, CVBs, DMCs, special tourism Products and many more. As an example I bring an interesting site that aims to bring excursion funs together with independent tour guides in Cyprus www.escapes-n-breaks.ning.com . The carrots David mentions in the world of tourism can be translated into tourism prizes that would defiantly increase tourist interest to old and new destinations.

4. Your company will have a social media policy
After discussing for one month with  40 top level marketers in how social media policy is important to their tourism enterprises we realize, at least here in Cyprus, how slowly but surely tourism companies adapt dynamic social programs. Still with some reservation on how social media can help them increase sales, but those reservations will disappear when they will receive the first inquiry, in social media the first inquiry may take some time to come but it is usually a firm “sale”  and a guaranteed satisfied customer (of course if we deliver at least the expected). And yes David is very right when he says  “If the company you work for doesn't already have a social media policy in place with specific rules of engagement across multiple networks, it just might in the next year.”

5. Mobile becomes a social media lifeline
In a meeting with a hotel owner I was really surprised to see that he was very furious about the fact that the Guest Relations Officer was “playing” on Facebook. So he personally asked the hotel director to “cut” all “Facebooks”. Like this, 70% of corporations and companies are banning social media. What this banning achieves is a huge explosion in smartphone sales and we are already experiencing Guest Relation Offices playing with their blackberry in the staff cafeteria, having Nimbuzz breaks at the same time of cigarette breaks and best about this is that the hotel gets benefited.

6. Sharing no longer means e-mail
Email ? who emails today to share a link, a presentation, etc ? Hotels and travel agents are the last of “Mohicans”. The of tools we have today to share our products and services are creating a revolution www.Ping.fm  , www.hootsuite.com  or www.sendible.com are simply the tip of the iceberg. I am wondering how many will still come. With one click you share your entire hotel inventory or via iphone applications you simply put your hotel in the telephone of every iphone user.

Thank you David for the inspiration.