Can Social Media help combat the demise of brand loyalty?

At EyeforTravel’s recent Social Media & Mobile in Travel event in San Francisco, Lee McCabe from Facebook quoted Jim Abrahamson, CEO, Interstate Hotels & Resorts - “We’re going to see the death of brand loyalty”

McCabe highlighted the fact that people are travelling more than ever, income levels are rising and technology has enabled customers are planning and sharing their travel ideas and experiences more and more, inspiring others to travel.  It should be a great time for travel brands and yet in reality the travel space has become more complicated and many execs are feeling the pressure.

Does brand loyalty exist in this hyper-competitive space?  What should travel brands be prioritising to win customers and compete?

McCabe highlighted that brands should focus on building good connections with their customers and work on turning them into influencers.  He advised that taking the approach to build connections on Facebook as quickly as possible through sweepstakes and competitions, is not the right way.   Instead brands need to invite their existing customers to be fans on Facebook and encourage them in turn to influence those in their network to also become fans. 

With developments such as Facebook Graph Search, the influence of a friend’s network with play a stronger role in their decision to purchase.  Encouraging customers to share their travel experiences post their stay is often a forgotten tool in the travel marketers armoury to help to further influence travellers at the dreaming and planning stages.

It can certainly be said that the connections a brand has will become more and more important in the near future.  In addition, customising message and ensuring consistent connectivity across multiple devices will play an important role in influencing a customer’s decision to choose your brand.

Facebook will be sharing more insights into the above at EyeforTravel’s TDS Europe Summit in London, 23-24 May.  Feel free to drop any questions you may have to them to me (gina@eyefortravel.com).

Research into Collaborative Marketplaces in The Travel Sector

I have spent the last few months (alongside my day job at EFT), researching the space of collaborative marketplaces and peer2peer websites. Essentially, this means the selling of a product from one consumer to another (using a platform or website) to exchange or buy direct without a business driving the transaction. The emphasis of these brands are that they are “green,” and “eco” and induce a sharing type attitude. 

As a brief introduction to the topic, you don’t need to look far to see examples of the p2p model, simply because these companies are not new. Ebay and Amazon are prime time early adopters of the p2p model, and are now two of the biggest retail outlets on earth.

So, what does the travel industry have to offer in this space?  At first thought, some of us might not think of any. But the truth is that the travel sector has one of the most rapidly expanding p2p networks in the world under the name Airbnb. The ethos is very much the opposite to hotels- it’s about sharing, caring and meeting new people in exciting places. Yes, Airbnb does take a hefty cut from both those listing and those receiving, which means there is a business driver behind the model. However, all in all, it works a little like Ebay, where by you reach to someone about their property and then liaise and work out the logistics. It just so happens that Airbnb has a great interface to facilitate easy transactions between two individuals.

Besides Airbnb, who else is experimenting in p2p? Most travel industry professionals will be familiar with car-share websites like Zipcar or even City Car Club. These models (whilst not exactly p2p) have a great ethic when it comes to greener car usage too. New kid on the block Whipcar takes the borrowing to another level, whereby you can borrow a car from your neighbour or someone in the local vicinity. You’ll be fully insured against damages and theft in the same way as you are with a mainstream organisation. So what’s the catch? Well, there isn’t one besides you generally won’t get the same quality of vehicle and it may well smell of stale smoke. You also don’t necessarily get a cheaper price than via the likes of Avis, Sixt or Europcar for example.

So why have we been looking into the p2p space? Well, many travel brands have indicated a concern over the growing market share of collaborative networks and websites. In fact, Avis bought Zipcar earlier this year for a reported $491.9 million.  BMW has also stepped into the space with its “BMW Drive Now” efforts. But what will happen in the hotel space? And is there room for p2p flying networks? Who knows!

We are keeping a close eye on this area with a view to commissioning a report about peer to peer marketplaces.  We’d love your feedback and thoughts on this, so please post them below or send me a tweet to @rosieakenhead

How is the sudden increase of mergers and acquisitions going to shape travel, in 2013 and beyond?

Priceline buying Kayak, AirAsia merging with Expedia, Delta investing in Virgin Atlantic, TripAdvisor buying Jetsetter….to name but a few.

This sudden flurry of company acquisitions and buy-outs in the travel space, coupled with the always-connected online and mobile consumer demonstrates how travel is moving at a faster pace than ever before.

Take these two examples. Can we identify key clues which indicate the direction the travel industry is pointing for 2013 and beyond?

Priceline buying Kayak:

Take Priceline’s unexpected move of purchasing Kayak end of last year– this immediately raised the importance of hotels and other travel related companies to have multi-channel digital marketing strategies and to not rely too heavily on Priceline or Google’s strategies.  Multi-channel and digital strategies emphasise the importance of presence on social channels (Facebook, Twitter – or RenRen, Weibo for the increasingly lucrative Chinese consumer) and that brand building through these is essential.

This acquisition also suggested that Priceline may be using Kayak as a way to bypass Google and consequently save up to $1 billion annually that it spends on Google – after all, Priceline is one of Google’s biggest customers, having spent $375.2 million in online advertising just in the third quarter of 2012.

What does this mean for Travel 2013 and beyond: The travel and hotel industry is incredibly fragmented and everyone is vying for space.  This is reflected by the big OTAs merging in the battle for supremacy.  Could this mean that smaller travel companies need to be even more innovative to compete, or should they be placing more effort in to looking at how to partner with such giants? 

Air Asia and Expedia:

What I found interesting about this was that ‘AirAsia Expedia’ appointed Kathleen Tan, who previously served as AirAsia's Group Head of Commercial and Senior Vice President in China since 2004.  Is it just a coincidence that they chose someone with a strong background in the Chinese market, or could this be a sign of things to come, suggesting and reinforcing AirAsia Expedia’s intention of placing an even bigger focus on penetrating the Chinese market.  This would make sense as the Guardian (among many) have recently reported, the “Chinese become world's biggest-spending tourists - Chinese tourists spent $102bn on foreign trips last year, outstripping travellers from Germany and the US” (www.theguardian.co.uk)

What does this mean for you in 2013 and beyond:  There has been a lot of press on the growth of China as a soon to explode huge player in the travel industry – everyone wants to know how to penetrate this market.  Should this be an area to focus your distribution efforts?

Conclusion:

The travel industry is booming.  2013 is set to have more apps, more online personalisation, more mobile friendly websites and more choice.  Smaller companies are going to have to place significant effort in building their brand through multi-channel marketing.  Ultimately, mergers and acquisitions mean more data and more reach, so as the travel giants battle it out, as a consumer, you can expect great things from travel.

The flurry in mergers could also be a reaction to the pressure and expectation the industry has around Google's travel plans.  The launches of Google Flight Search and Google Hotel Finder caused a stir, years before they even got released.  Maybe the key players ‘merging and acquiring’ is in the wake of the prospect of a big entrant like Google making waves in the online TA space.

As a competitor, expect to be integrating slick, targeted and personalised marketing into your distribution strategies. To make sure your strategy is on track for success in 2013 and beyond; make sure you attend the 9^th Annual  Travel Distribution Summit,Asia 2013

Hyper-Personalization – Is your company ready?

At EyeforTravel, we are often asked what the future holds for travel marketing.  In my research ahead of EyeforTravel’s Online Marketing Strategies for Travel conference in Miami, the buzzwords for 2013 have been mobile and also personalization.

What’s interesting to me is the rapid development of the technology that facilitates personalization.  Personalization means going far beyond just acknowledging that they’re a valued customer.  Understanding what it is the consumer wants, needs and indeed when they want to hear from you and how, sets brands aside from their competitors and wins sales.  Even more intelligent brands are integrating social data, booking patterns, anticipating wants and needs to inspire customers and sell travel products that are highly targeted to them, that they might not have realized were on offer if it wasn’t for the right marketing message at the right time. 

You can only do this however, if the tools you have permit.  Thankfully such tools are advancing.

A great example of this is Facebook’s “Unpublished Posts” feature – something until recently only available for adverts appearing on the right hand side of a user’s page. Now, posts targeted to specific segments can be published on to their newsfeeds, without appearing on other users’ newsfeeds or the Page’s own feed. This means that relevant content will be delivered directly to the user where they’re most likely to see it, without the danger of alienating the rest of your audience, which could result in them clicking the dreaded “unsubscribe” option.

Personalization, requires an integration of your marketing efforts, and data is at the heart of this. Existing data must be leveraged to build robust databases that can then be added to as more information is collated. Though it is certainly a dire warning not to go too far when it comes to personalizing your content, Target’s story of how they used algorithms to work out a young girl was pregnant before her father knew, shows that with careful analysis of patterns and data, you can determine a lot about your consumer – but remember, as Spiderman’s uncle Ben once told him, “with great power, comes great responsibility”.

So where does the future of personalization lie? In further personalizing the consumer’s experience; at every level. Websites will become fully adaptable to their visitors, so a sun-worshipping beach body will be greeted with an entirely different page to an adrenaline-junkie adventure traveler. The messages, calls to action and offers all being adapted to the individual based on their data. Even Search is becoming more and more personalized, Google’s alogorithm learns what it’s users are searching for, and engines such as Bing are allowing users to integrate their Facebook accounts to power their personalized search – and thereby opening the door for even more relevant, targeted advertising.

Utilizing these tools, you can create a comprehensive personalization strategy with marketing that users will not find intrusive but genuinely useful. Dancing that fine line between helpful and creepy will help instill loyalty to your brand, which will drive sales and in turn provide more data for your personalization strategies, marking you out in the consumer’s eye as a cut above the rest.

To find out more about Hyper-Personalization as well as other key Online Marketing strategies why not check out our Online Marketing Strategies for Travel: The Americas & Caribbean 2013 (June 4-5^th, Miami) where Ritz-Carlton, Virgin Atlantic, Avis and many other top travel brands will be presenting the latest developments in Online Marketing in the travel space.

Social Networks – ‘Over 50% of people never research travel through Social Media’

By Emily Assender

I’m a bit of a latecomer I admit, but I’ve recently become a Twitter fanatic and can’t get enough of the tool.  I was thinking though - would Twitter influence my decision to purchase a holiday?  Would Facebook carry more weight?  What about other social channels?

Travel Reviews on Social Media sites have been proven to create a direct increase in bookings for travel brands.  But how significant is the role of Social Media in the research process?  I decided to do some reading around the topic.  

EyeforTravel’s Travel Consumer Report 2012-2013 shows that social networks are more valuable for reviews (rather than selling products) and that when it comes to actually making the booking, “respondents currently do not use social networks to research travel products or destinations”.

To look at the US, the report asked 3,044 correspondents and here’s what they said:

·         57% said they never use SM to research travel products

·         53% never use SM to research destinations

·         53% of consumers said that they never use SM to keep updated on travel company news or deals

So, actually how important is Social Media to your overall brand?  Do we over-hype it in the wrong areas and what is the best way to integrate it perfectly into our marketing strategy?

Edward Perry, Global Senior Director of Social Media Projects at World Hotels says,

“In terms of Social Media, you need to focus on the intent.  If the intent is solely to generate bookings, then social media may not necessarily be the best vehicle to do this on.  Travel companies, hotels and airlines should be focussing on Social Media because of the long term effect.  Social Media should be used to complement branding and marketing and should be used not as a completely different marketing channel, but should be weaved into the current marketing efforts as a means of communicating back and forth with the (potential) consumer.”

To learn more about the value of Social Media and how to use it in the most effective way for your brand, make sure you check out the 9^th Annual Travel Distribution Summit, Asia (28-29^th May, Singapore) where Twitter, World Hotels, Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flight Centre, Emirates, Japan Airlines, Starwood Hotels, Malaysia Airlines, Groupon and more - will all be presenting their views on this theme.

For more info on the event, visit: http://bit.ly/ZkoSQP

What do Twitter plan for the travel industry?

Hacked accounts and controversial law suits.  Twitter has been hitting the headlines recently for all the wrong reasons.  However, with their newly announced Advertising API, revenues at the Social Media giant are set to soar.

According to eMarketer, Twitter ad revenues hit $259 million last year.  TechCrunch predict this could rise to a massive $1billion in 2013.

With Twitter set to make its inaugural travel industry appearance at EyeforTravel’s Social Media & Mobile in Travel conference in San Francisco next month, we examine what opportunities lies ahead for the travel industry.  

Twitter has a billion tweets every 2.5 days on every conceivable topic - including travel.  Through introducing an advertising API they aim to allow brands to "to run ad campaigns through the company’s API partners, rather than having to buy them through Twitter itself."

This will allow advertisers to buy more ads, run them more quickly and in a more sophisticated manner.  It will also allow for better targeted campaigns.  The value-add is the ability to productively and efficiently grow and scale campaigns,” a source said.

Twitter have already started briefing large social media marketing agencies, which help brands and big advertisers plan and buy ads on social networks like Twitter.  

What does this mean for travel brands?  Well, many airlines and hotels are successfully using Twitter particularly as a customer service and engagement tool.  But, will they see the value in purchasing advertising?

Well, Twitter advertising could potentially help them extend their reach as interestingly, 70% of Twitters 200 million monthly active users are based outside of the U.S.   The advertising API allows brands to launch global campaigns across different geographies. 

Whether travel brands will be interested in purchasing advertising remains to be seen.  It also remains to be seen how users will respond the greater infusion of advertising into the social network.

Would you advertise via Twitter?  We’d love to hear your thoughts!  

Want to find out more?  We’ll be quizzing Twitter themselves during their inaugural travel industry appearance as well as gauging the travel and hospitality industry opinion at EyeforTravel’s upcoming Social Media & Mobile in Travel conference in San Francisco, March 18-19.  

Dan Greene, Director of US Online Sales & Operations fromTwitter will be joining Facebook, Google, Uber, and Cathay Pacific to share Twitter’s views on the future of social business and what it means for travel brands.

Join us! http://events.eyefortravel.com/social-media/conference-agenda.php

There’s “No I(T) in Team” For Travel Companies, Is There?

It’s not actually that often that we hear from the IT and Tech folk within a travel company. Ie, the people who really make buying decisions on solutions and technologies. The focus of so many travel conferences, including most of ours, is upon the distribution, pricing and marketing functions of the business. With that in mind, I’ve spent the last six months talking to people working in this integral part of the business. It has highlighted a number of opportunities and challenges in this space which I truly hadn’t anticipated (perhaps naively, but still).  

With the launch of the first ever Smart Travel Technology Conference imminent, I thought it would be interesting to outline my top 6 current issues as described by CIOs and CTos in the travel sector. You’ll be surprised I think, as I was, at how many of these issues are shared across hotels, airlines, cruise lines, car hire companies, OTAs and more. So here’s the list.

1. Who Owns The Data! This is something we covered at our recent Smart Travel Analytics Conference in NYC. It’s a big issue for IT professionals in the travel and hospitality sectors, largely because often they own the rights to systems, and they often act as “gatekeepers” to the data (although many dislike the term). This leads to internal aggravations when it comes to who has access to various databases and what actions they can take. The IT team are often in the centre of this web, and it’s a difficult position to moderate.  
2. Innovation in The Future: In general, travel IT execs are pretty up to speed with new technologies for the travel sector. But! What about futuristic consumer technologies outside of travel like 3d printing, hologram TV, Google Goggles, ANW and interactive advertising screens? How can you stay ahead of the curve and your customerr
3. Internal Struggles: It’s the name of this blog post and it’s a huge issue for IT execs. What exactly should the role of an IT professional working in travel be, and how can IT increase boardroom awareness of technology and IT related issues? These questions are just a few which came up in the research. Others include recruiting IT talent (and keeping it), working with other teams and more.
4. SAAS Based Solutions: We’re Not There Yet! I remember back in 2009 when I started out in the travel industry that Cloud companies were everywhere, and it was the next big thing. Over the last year or so, conversation in this space has lessened at our conferences and other trade shows alike. However, the issue has never been more important as it is right now. With data warehousing becoming more difficult to find and more expensive, businesses are slowly starting to transfer to the Cloud. But with this transfer, come a lot of headaches- think moving databases in real time, privacy laws, hacking concerns and escalating Cloud rental costs for a start.
5. Wifi and Bandwidth: Despite large scale technology expenditure in this area by most travel companies (particularly affecting hotels, airlines and cruises), wifi and bandwidth issues are still unfortunately very much afloat. IT professionals have been asking us, “how do you re-align your HSIA infrastructure for better customer service and also a fully backed up internal system?”
6. Payment and Transactional Efficiency: Significant changes are afoot in terms of the way travel companies can sell to their customer. Compliancy and PCI regulation, plus strategic planning for payment related deadlines are all hot topics for 2013 and beyond.

I’ve covered here just a sample of things IT professionals are talking about in 2013. I have already admitted that I was extremely surprised to see not just so many new issues that I hadn’t anticipated, but also some issues which had perhaps “gone out of the limelight” in the news, but topics that were absolutely, wholly, still affecting travel companies on a daily basis. I’m excited to see what happens at the summit this October, and to meet CIOs and CTOs alike to discuss these topics in more detail.