Travel and tourism has always relied on the power of word of mouth to market to travellers. For much of the 21st century, friends and family provided the main tools for inspiration alongside tourism guides, magazines and travel agencies. However, since the turn of the century the emergence of the internet and later more sophisticated web 2.0 digital technologies has transformed the end-to-end travel process.
Social media provides travellers with a gateway to the opinions and recommendations of millions of people, including friends within their social network and like-minded travellers. Social media and travel gel because of the experiential nature of travel, which is a social activity in itself. Travel requires information, and travellers have a strong desire to share information about their experience.
New offerings from companies such as Airbnb, Wayn and Couchsurfing – digital platforms specifically designed for the new consumer – are disrupting the industry models themselves.
The Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region stretches nearly 6,500 kilometres from west to east, embracing more than 20 countries. Heavily influenced by Arab traditions and the Islamic faith, it has a multitude of attractions to offer its visitors.
Countries such as the UAE and Qatar have already reaped the benefits of effective branding and marketing campaigns to become competitive with other global destinations as significant tourist hubs. However, many regional travel and tourism organisations are not making the most of this powerful marketing channel.
Social media is now a very noisy environment. It’s more important than ever to ensure your activity is effective enough to rise above the crowd. It’s not about budget, it’s about being smart. Social media can deliver against your key business requirements. It can help you identify where to target and find your customer and it can create lifelong advocates and ambassadors for your brand. To do that you must first understand that social media is not about platforms, but people. This means investing time in understanding the people you want to communicate with, and pinpointing what really influences their behaviour.
Social media has affected the tourist in a number of key ways that you can influence. Firstly, think of it as the industrialisation of the power of word of mouth. If you create the right social media strategy, you can positively and powerfully change how your consumers choose their travel location and activities.
The internet plays a fundamental role in tourism; the most trustworthy sources for travellers now being crowd-sourced opinion and review sites such as Trip Advisor, Facebook and online travel forums providing consumers with comfort and security about specific travel choices from their peers.
And it’s not just in researching, planning and booking travel that social media plays a part. A key component for industry players to understand is how travellers embrace social channels during the trip. What are the top reasons for use when on a trip? Generally there are five top topics on which travellers are most likely to comment online during a holiday: shopping, local cuisine, fine food, historical sites and outdoor activities.
And what social media activity takes place after a holiday is over? The most popular tends to be sharing self-made videos and photos, both during and after their holidays. Next is sharing blog posts or news stories, and finally “liking” the location on social networks.
The “social tourist” is an important phenomenon and the effect that high-profile millennial social influencers can have on your marketing strategy cannot be underestimated.
Powerful social media can only truly occur if you deliver a seamless cross-screen customer experience of your brand and business. If you want to go beyond simple community management, then you need to understand how to integrate social media across your entire organisation to boost loyalty and sales. This must be tied into a smart and evolving strategy which capitalises on the importance of video and visual social content, and how that could tie into mobile and wearable technologies which create a truly bespoke and integrated offering.
The possibilities and opportunities of harnessing social media to create powerful communities of loyal and engaged advocates has been demonstrated by Australia’s Tourism Board, Turkish Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, and The Four Seasons Hotel Group on an international level.
I would love to see home-grown brands from the Middle East becoming powerhouses on the global playing field through their understanding and usage of social media.
The power of social media within the travel industry will be discussed at the 3rd GCC Government Social Media Summit on September 17 and 18 in Dubai. Marhaba to the mobile savvy, socially sophisticated of the Middle East.
Ema Linaker is a social media expert
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