Social media is the most engaging medium for global travelers and for travel companies, social media means business. A recent report from Facebook and Deloitte explores the enormous opportunity of using the travel experiences shared by travelers worldwide in generating leads and understanding traveler preferences.
Social media leader Facebook is perhaps the largest community in the online networking paradigm. Consequently, the section ‘travel’ is quite a big community. Travel companies can track, trace and use the ongoing interactions, engagement and experiences shared on Facebook for future analysis and growing travel trade.
Facebook and Deoloitte collected impressions from 10,400 social media users and indentified some of the following key metrics of social media that can be used by the world travel industry:
Social media ranks second to friends and family as source of travel ideas.
- 76% of social media users have a dream trip list, but only 8% have been everywhere on the list.
- OTAs have a 37% share within this cohort.
- Reviews continue to maintain importance in the travel process: 68% say reviews give them the confidence to book.
- Holidays/vacations were the third-most reported topic that the surveyed social media users consumed.
The report outlines some of the most imperative features of the social media world and its impact on the travel and tourism industry. The report states how all digital channels collect basic demographic information about their users, along with data like age, gender, geography. Many consumers tender more information like relationship status, travel locations, work history and income.
This information can be a gold mine for travel companies and in a way makes the social media platform a very crucial parameter for the growth of such companies.
