Simpliflying spent some time analysing the data from a recent EyeforTravel report understand how travel companies are approaching social media in 2012.
Here are some interesting findings from the study, Social Media and Mobile Strategies for the Travel Industry 2011:
- Location-based services such as Foursquare will be huge this year. Almost half of all the airlines surveyed wish to increase their presence in location-based social networks in 2012 (they’re going to get you while you travel!)
- Over 70% of travel marketers are using social media to “build their brands” – a typically “fluffy” or qualitative goal which often can’t be measured in concrete terms
- More marketers (56% vs 45%) are confident of having unlocked useful data to measure ROI on their mobile strategies vs general social media strategies.
- Almost 60% of marketers are either sure of the conversions to booking rate via Facebook or have a fair idea, which is rather impressive.
And here is the obligatory infographic:
Related posts:
About Kevin May
Beautifully captured data – visually appealing and a job well done by Simpliflying (as always!)
The part that has me most pleased is the percentage of markers who feel they have a decent understanding of conversion rate. Even with the talk of ‘fluffy’, qualitative measurements, I think ROI is becoming a bit easier to understand. It will be interesting to see this same analysis a year later.
Jenn Seeley
Community Engagement – Radian6
Great infographic, and encouraging stats for anyone who may question the value of social media in the travel space. Hopefully the number of brands with mobile optimised websites will increase greatly over the coming 12 months. I look forward to seeing the next addition of this infographic.
Jaclyn Amoroso
OnQ Marketing
Google+ is missing, is any airline considering it as an serious channel ….
Matthias – G+ is still new with airlines and while a growing number are getting on the platform, engagement is still focused on Facebook and Twitter since that’s where the travelers. I’m sure the next time we run this infographic, we’ll have some statistics on G+ as well.
Meanwhile, here’s an article about airlines on G+ you’d find useful: http://bit.ly/sfm6HU
There’s no mention of travel specific social media platforms. There’s quite a lot of them out there working in different ways and achieving great results – seems a bit short sighted to only focus on the ‘mainstream’?
Very neat infographic… I agree with Nathan that it would be good to see the feedback from other networks too in next years edition. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Pinterest on the list next year for instance as it is pretty well set up for travel companies with prices/links on hd images and ‘bucket list’ boards to battle for. May be a slow burner but I’d say one to explore for aggregators and small providers with a half decent camera.
Great infographic, just like Jaclyn said in her comment, these findings give great encouragement to anyone who may question the use of social media and mobile in the travel space. Embracing these channels and technologies will be very important for continued success in hotel marketing.
It is surprising to me that with smartphone usage for travel planning on the rise, your infographic shows that over 60 percent of travel brands still don’t have mobile optimized websites. Though the infographic shows that travel marketers are focusing most on mobile in the pre-purchase phase of the consumer life cycle. What are they doing if not optimizing their hotel websites for mobile? BTW I suspect that the percentage of hotel property websites (yes even though brands don’t want properties to have them… they do) that are not mobile optimized is even higher than 60%!
If the consumer is unable to research your hotel and gather information on their mobile device, they are likely going to find a hotel for which they can – which is a lost opportunity for you.