Resulting from the economic downturn, the travel and hospitality industry face stiff competition to reach increasingly fewer travelers. Online travel consumers increasingly rely on social media to influence their destination selection. Noted Travel 2.0 blogger, Troy Thompson, recently reported a major finding in Forrester’s second quarter consumer poll showing that 75% of Internet users are engaging in some form of social media, up from 56% in 2007. Another Forrester poll showed that 57% of destination marketing organization website visitors read traveler written reviews: consumers are the most trusted voice. Moreover, nearly 40% of online travel consumers visit travel-related social networking sites to influence their destination selection. If travelers are turning to social media, then travel marketing professionals cannot afford to completely ignore it. The question is, “How do travel marketing professionals get started with social computing?”

Charlene Li, a Forrester analyst and writer, has codified a process she calls the POST process in her book co-written by Josh Bernoff, Groundswell. The POST process (acronym for people, objective, strategy, technology), informs marketers on the who, where, why and how of engaging online consumers through social media. Like any other engagement in social media, the main goal should be to change a relationship, ideally for the better. Successful social media participation can increase sales and brand equity by facilitating trusted relationships with social communities that influence search and purchase behaviors.

Travel marketing professionals that do open the social media doors, must be willing to hand over some control of their brand messaging (as if they really had control) to prepare to address and sometimes simply deal with negative feedback. Controlling the conversations is not the goal — listening and reacting to capture new opportunities is. Every conversation is a potential opportunity. The enabling connectivity of social media has given consumers control of brand messaging: your brand is what people say about it online. The increased transparency achieved by engaging online travel consumers through social media provides immeasurable credibility and can invigorate your brand loyalists to influence others, thus diminishing the relevance of a few negative reviews. Since Google seems to love to rank blogs, the link juice from these online conversations will also provide your CMO with the ROI he or she demands. As travel marketing professionals compete to reach increasing fewer travelers, engaging travel-related social communities can expose opportunities for improving brand messaging and achieving business objectives.

Tags: Interactive marketing, social media, travel marketing