online travel industry & social networks

Where I've Been & Facebook. Happily ever after.
With Facebook's recent announcement that they have over 276 million monthly unique users on their site, it is clear that social networking sites are continuing to flourish, attracting people from all around the world. For travel marketers, this is a perfect opportunity to strike gold by using social networks to their advantage, increasing their brand awareness online. Within a year alone, social networking sites have significantly jumped 60%. See chart below:


In the article, "The Growing Opportunity for Online Travel Sites to Target Social Networks", Emeka Ajene speaks about the growth of Hotel sites and their impact throughout social networks.

Ajene states that the "share of referrals from social networks to hotel websites is growing rapidly (up 151% since February 2008) ...the more interesting finding is that the conversion rate of the referrals from social networks to hotel websites exhibits a similar growth trend, growing 98% year over year ...these findings indicate that social networks are increasingly a source of in-market traffic for hoteliers." (source: blog.compete.com)

It is clear that travel marketers can use social networking sites to their own advantage, taking them for all they are worth. Ajene adds that travel marketers can be strategic, testing and using social networking sites that resonate well with their brand. Competitive digital intelligence "can be used to investigate brand shopper engagement with various social networking features to ascertain which features and functionalities would align with a brand’s own social media implementations." (source: blog.compete.com)

What do you think of the increase of traffic within the online travel industry? If a certain social networking site fails, how/will this affect the online travel industry? Can the online travel industry survive without social networks, or have they become too dependable on them?

Let me know your thoughts..

Katy Lynch
Community Manager
Where I've Been | Twitter | Facebook

Still confused about social networking - what it is and what it entails? Check out this handy-dandy little YouTube video.