Comments on: Social media – why man is beating the machine

By: Morris Sim

Morris Sim — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:15:07 +0000

Hi Mark, you’re right re: Twitter — though some companies (like JetBlue and Virgin America) are leveraging Twitter fairly effectively to promote deals and to stay in touch with their followers. Your point about Facebook is interesting, though when you look at the other top social media sites (for example, Blogger or YouTube), they don’t manage to refer any significant traffic to Singaporeair.com as Facebook, which would suggest that Facebook’s referral is more than just due to its popularity. Finally, I think a wonderful product for consumers would be the ability for people to find travel recommendations based on people who are like them. Until that product comes along, many travelers do take reviews from strangers into consideration when making their purchase decision, particularly if they’re going to a place where neither they nor their friends/family/colleagues have ever been,

By: The Week in Travel Tech - November 22 to 28 2009 | Tnooz

The Week in Travel Tech - November 22 to 28 2009 | Tnooz — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:30:22 +0000

[...] Social media – why man is beating the machine [...]

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:30:30 +0000

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Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:28:08 +0000

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By: Mark Seall

Mark Seall — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:48:58 +0000

I’m not convinced (yet) that Twitter works well for sales – Twitter is a push mechanism and I’m not sure that many people purchase travel on impulse.

Meanwhile, although I see that customer reviews help conversions I’m not really convinced about the currency of customer ratings and reviews since in most cases the review says more about the reviewer than the product. How many of your friends have identical travel preferences to you?

Final thought – I see various sources that say Facebook is a fast growing up-stream referrer and so I’m not surprised that 1 in 20 visits to Singapore airlines come via Facebook. But is that not merely a function of Facebook’s huge user base instead of its suitability as a sales lead generator?

There is clearly a role for social media in travel, but todays attempts to use it to sell travel are falling rather short.