Three ways social media can help brands in the travel sector

Over the past few months, we’ve been working with, and speaking to, a number of organisations in the travel sector – in partnership with our good friends at Spike Marketing, the travel sector CRM specialists. We’ve identified a number of trends in the business challenges that social media are helping these organisations solve, and the type of solutions we are being asked to help deliver. Below are a few details on three of these solutions.

1. Creation of expert social media profiles

Travel organisations can use social media to source, develop and build the public profile of employees who are acting as experts on specific locations, pursuits, activities and associated holiday preferences. The one-to-many nature of social media activity can enable these ‘employee experts’ to build relationships across large numbers of customers and prospects. They can publish curated content via RSS feeds, Twitter and other social platforms to enable the general public to gather information on the travel passion points that match their own needs and interests.

This activity is enabling operators, hotels and other travel organisations to:

• Drive greater prospect consideration
• Build longer-term, more profitable relationships with their customers
• Improve internal knowledge management and, accordingly, team performance

2. Virtual travel counsellors

Social media are enabling travel counsellors to play a much more meaningful, ongoing role in customers’ research and decision-making processes. The ability to collate and filter the vast amount of travel and holiday content on the web enables these counsellors to provide much richer answers to customers’ questions and queries. They can also open up their own social media channels to share their own personal discoveries on a one-to-many basis.

This activity is enabling organisations to:

• Create purchase, cross- and up-sell opportunities
• Drive greater customer interaction and brand loyalty between holiday purchases
• Increase the operational efficiency of travel agent and associated customer service staff. This includes in-resort staff, who can provide more frequent and more cost effective advice online or in social media

3. Product improvement using ratings/review data

Travel organisations can set up technology and processes to enable them to filter, analyse and act upon ratings and review data. They can develop insights and trends that enable them to respond and improve their products and services as a result. In this way, organisations can meet their customers’ demands to not only listen to what they want, but be seen to be openly doing something about the data their customers provide. Social media is making this feedback loop a basic customer expectation, and an activity that can be performed at scale.

Evolving products and services on a more regular basis is not without its challenges. However, this activity is already enabling more niche travel, or bespoke holiday, organisations to:

• Innovate and improve the quality of the product
• Improve customer satisfaction levels
• Improve brand reputation for customer service

There are undoubtedly many other important social media solutions being employed, depending on a travel organisation’s specific challenges. However, the above provide some indication of the big changes we’re seeing in the ways in which social media is driving organisational and cultural change in the travel sector.