Social media’s place as a marketing channel for the travel industry as well as its use for researching and buying a holiday is causing much scratching of heads.
Today, as World Travel Market opens, a survey by the exhibition organisers finds 40% of UK travellers are using social media to help research a holiday.
Last week a survey by Conrad Advertising found social media – including Facebook and Twitter - had little influence on 40% of consumers.
But, for the industry the medium is now viewed as the most important marketing channel ahead of consumer reviews, mobile and pay-per-click advertising.
Furthermore, in five years time 48% of the industry believes social media will be more important than PPC while 37% say it will remain behind PPC and 15% believe it is already at a tipping point and its popularity will diminish.
Of the industry figures surveyed by WTM 22% already use social media as a revenue stream and 27% are planning to going forward.
For the consumers that do use social media in their travel plans, 89% have had a positive experience and 23% say they have used it more in 2011 than 2010.
The medium is also having a significant impact on their travel plans with a third saying they change their hotel choice after consulting social media channels while one-in-ten switch resorts.
Further findings of the World Travel Market 2011 Industry Report:
- 66% of travellers say they did not access any websites via mobile while researching their holiday
- Two out of 10 say their mobile device does not have web access
- Less than 30% would consider mobile to book a holiday in the next five years and only 9% may book using their mobile in 2012
- More than half of consumers do not use their mobile phone while on holiday with 42% saying it is because of roaming charges
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About Linda Fox
I know I research holidays using Trip Advisor and similar review sites but also Google maps gives you a great idea of what an area is like. You can even walk up the streets using Street View sometimes ! Not sure i use Facebook and Twitter though unless they happen to come up in the Google search. Although I might be more likely to ask friend’s opinions of holidays using Facebook etc.
40% of holiday makers are using social media to research their dream holiday right?
Wouldn’t it be more cost effective to go after the 30% of users who browse through Bing and save yourself thousands upon thousands upon thousands of social media engagement, strategy and god know’s what else costs?
“But, for the industry the medium is now viewed as the most important marketing channel for the industry ahead of consumer reviews, mobile and pay-per-click advertising.”
Apart from SEO-marketing I presume, which was perhaps not tested in the equation.
It’s a good thing (Social over PPC), if only to become less dependent of the big search engines. Seeing the big changes in SERPs and in presentation of travel searches on google, which will IMO undoubtedly push PPC prices up, social marketing is key.
I represent around 150 Uk hotels as consultant, and not one of them has any grounds for agreeing, nor would agree with your ‘hypotheses’
More are actually concerned about Facebook fatigue et al
There really are two sides to all this social media hype, the commercial one and the ‘altruistic’ one.
In my world, the jury is still ou – well and truly out. Am i living on some kind of desert island?
Trip Advisor perhaps, but then this is TRAVEL SPECIFIC social media
I’m really struggling to find anything in this article to backup the title’s claim.
In one sentence you say that “the medium is now viewed as the most important marketing channel for the industry ahead of consumer reviews, mobile and pay-per-click advertising.”
And then in the very next sentence you say
“in five years time 48% of the industry believes social media will be more important than PPC”
That’s less than half of the industry that believe social media will overtake PPC in the next 5 YEARS. Implies strongly that PPC is still more important. That’s MORE than half who feel that PPC will still be more important in 5 years from now. How does this translate to “Social is now more important than PPC”?
And as a point of clarification, do Facebook ads count as PPC or as Social?
Thanks Peter
The survey doesn’t go into that level of detail re: Facebook ads.
It is a snapshot of how senior figures feel now and how they think things will pan out.
The current importance figures were produced by asking the sample to rate channels from 1 to 5. Averaging out across the entire sample, social media came out top.
The five years time element was drawn from three statements which the sample was asked to respond to.
Also, something I did not include was that half of those using social media do not invest in PPC and a further 20% have reduced spend on PPC because of social media.
A Centre for Media Research recent survey showed that only 38% of companies surveyed (which included a lot of very large companies) have their own standalone SM budget, the rest all plundered other budgets to pay for it, including 34% who raided their search budget!! (SEO and paid search)
To reduce spend on what hitherto is core proven marketing activity to fund social media activity is a highly dangerous proposition commercially owing to the unreliability of measurement of social media results and success. You are massively increasing the risk profile of your marketing spend, this is not for the faint hearted.
The corollary to this interestingly is that if these search budgets hadn’t existed – - – - well you tell me, where would the SM spend have come from? This dependency therefore totally renders the claim of SM as /number 1′ as highly suspect, if not irrelevant.
Thanks Linda. Is there a link to the survey? Curious how this survey was executed.
Also, there’s an important distinction here between “importance” and “perceived importance”. This survey is clearly about perceived importance which most certainly is not the same as what actually is important
Here’s the link http://www.wtmlondon.com/files/onsite_wtm_industry_report_2011.pdf and yes I agree re: perceived and real importance.
Thanks for that! Some interesting reading in there
I wonder if this perception is somewhat down to the fact that Social Media ROI is hard to measure. As a result, people might have wildly different ideas about what is important.
Being told over and over at conferences that social is the Current Big Thing no doubt has affected their perception of its importance.
Peter, the measurement of success problem remains a separate challenge and is never/rarely mentioned as an influencer on popularity of SM commercially, quite the contrary, it is often i think purposely avoided as an issue for fear that it might adversely affect populairty, rather like the cost of social media activity, which is also rarely mentioned, defined or measured.
No other form of marketing activity gets away with this. (lack of proof of concept/measurability). I wonder why.
I think you’re right Robert.
Incidentally, this is an interesting development that will surely cause PPC marketers to add social into their bag of tricks: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/11/connect-your-google-page-to-your.html
Facebook, StumbleUpon and now even Twitter are implementing PPC, in a good way for any travel related company it should become the number one
Six months later, this statement is still total nonsense