SPECIAL REPORT | SOCIAL MEDIA


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MAKING SOCIAL MEDIA WORK FOR YOU


STEVE KEENAN, CO-FOUNDER OF TRAVEL PERSPECTIVE, IS A TRAVEL JOURNALISTWITH 25 YEARS’ EXPERIENCE AND A SPECIALIST IN SOCIAL AND DIGITAL MEDIA. AHEAD OF TODAY’S SEMINAR, HE SHARES HIS THOUGHTS ON CREATING A SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY THAT DELIVERS


N


oel Josephides sends 25,000 holiday- makers abroad every


year from the UK, mostly to Greece. He has been selling holidays successfully for three decades, but he is worried. Like many tourism


professionals who have spent 30 years building their businesses, Noel is faced with a series of challenges: the economy; the ageing demographic of his customers; and the rising costs of his business model. He breaks down the costs of


his company, Sunvil Holidays: £200,000 to print his brochures; £280,000 for advertising and marketing; and £70,000 for PR. The total is £550,000. “If I was starting over again now, I would never print brochures,” he says. Now he has social media to


understand and devote time to. Noel doesn’t tweet, blog or go on Facebook. “I’m 64 and I am not interested, but that doesn’t mean we won’t do it.” He is typical of many


professionals. While committed to printing brochures for clients who now expect and demand one, he is spending incremental money in experimenting on new ways of selling. The trouble is he doesn’t know which way to choose. Noel has put aside £52,000


this year for key-word and pay-per-click advertising. He also pays well-established blogger Andy Jarosz of @501places, to write one article a month for Sunvil’s site to help boost the company’s appearance in natural search results. Sunvil is experimenting


in online advertising, search and social media, as all travel


that have incorporated booking into their Facebook pages. On average, people research


28 sites before making a decision to book. They then head to their favourite booking site, be it Expedia, TripAdvisor or another. However, there will be an incremental increase of booking on pages that inspire users, be it through a competition, deal or superb written content. Among tourist boards,


Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Canada, Jordan and Oman have been the most proactive in encouraging and incentivising bloggers to visit – a sensible precaution as they see traditional print sections shrink or disappear. It makes sense. For little


Park Regis Kris Kin Hotel Dubai is rolling out its social media strategy at Arabian Travel Market – visit stand HC4320


companies are. Yet, while the direct spend on advertising can be equated to results, it is social media that is most vexing for travel companies. Peter Shanks, President of


Cunard, recently described social media as a great tool for informing people and interacting with them, though not yet a money-spinner. "Social media is fabulous. The only challenge is, we haven't found a way to make money out of it," he told Reuters. These are complex times


for marketers. While they wish for a formula to translate social media time and cost into return on investment (ROI), they are also struggling to understand the value of apps, which is in fact very little. Additionally, they are having to adapt sites and sales for


Airlines have been the most


enthusiastic in embracing social media. KLM first used channels to


reach out to customers affected by the Icelandic ash cloud. Now it has 31 people in its social media team across all departments in the airline


the mobile, a bankable channel for the future. In Q3 of 2011, travel bookings made by mobile increased by 30 percent according to eyefortravel.com – with cruise reporting the sharpest rise. The more familiar and simple


the product, such as a favourite hotel offering a deal on a mobile, then the more likely customers are to book. Marketers like and understand that. Yet it is social media that


travel firms find the most difficult to grasp, particularly those industry professionals who insist on treating it as a sales channel, which it clearly isn’t – at least, not yet. William Bakker, Creative


Director of agency Think! Social Media, said in the Reuters analysis: “We’re seeing a lot of experimentation and some scattered successes by a number of companies. “Social media is a new way of doing business. This means


it's a disruptor to most business models and taking it seriously will likely require some risks to existing business models that most executives aren't willing to take at this point." The constant refrain from


beleaguered companies is: what is the ROI? It’s a simplistic and outdated argument, as much as ROI from a newspaper advert or feature was always flawed. Who actually picked up the travel section? How many actually stopped at that article? How many read it? Or kept it? Social media is a new


way of working. It’s about talking to customers directly, involving them in your product. I know of one tour operator that asks clients to blog their walking-tour trips for them using video to illustrate. It’s not about launching a


website and leaving clients to talk among themselves in a forum. It’s about having a


coffee with them, feeling good about it and enjoying the chat. Most travel firms have,


however, done the basics. The research from eyefortravel shows that all travel brands now have a Facebook page (how could they not, as FB accounts for one in seven minutes spent online and 75 percent of time spent on social media online.) The research also shows


that 75 percent of travel brands have a presence on Twitter, a sliding percentage have YouTube, LinkedIn and Flickr channels, while photo-sharing site Pinterest, Instagram and Google+ are the latest social media trends to get to grips with. "We're not in the Internet


era anymore, we're in the splinternet era,“ says Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research. It’s a good quote, as travel brands need to work out which social media works best for them: being individual, rather than hitching standard wagons to a formulaic brochure, advert, editorial business model. Airlines have been the most


enthusiastic in embracing social media. KLM first used channels to reach out to customers affected by the Icelandic ash cloud. Now it has 31 people in its social media team across all departments in the airline. Delta, meanwhile, is among airlines


Steve Keenan is speaking at today’s seminar ‘Social Travel Market: The rise and rise of video in travel social media’ taking place in the Technology Theatre at 4pm–5pm.


outlay, bloggers visit and use several social media channels to write and broadcast their trips. Their work and reviews will often feed into review sites, which are multiplying. Additionally, there’s a practical aspect too. Google now includes video and social media in determining its algorithms. It is no longer just new text and link juice: social media is part of the game. Half of all brands and tourist


boards already acknowledge that social media has led to direct bookings and it will increase. As Bakker says, it is a new way of doing business and it’s only just begun.


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