You may have noticed recently that we’re in the midst of what seems to be a social media mania. You can’t pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV news without reading or hearing something about Twitter, Facebook or similar social media. Manias make me nervous. They can serve as hotbeds of collective creativity and innovation, but also generate a lot of misinformation and misdirection. Remember the whole dot-com mania of the late 1990s? Ten years ago the dot-com maniacs thought we were all going to be buying all our furniture, groceries and pet food online by now. And of course travel agents’ days were supposedly numbered – right?

Well, there’s no doubt that a lot of purchasing has moved online, but I still find myself at the local grocery store twice week (my two boys are bottomless pits). There’s no doubt that a lot of travel buying has moved online. At PhoCusWright, we project online leisure and unmanaged business travel will represent 38 percent of the total travel market in 2009.

For their part, travel agents have gone through a lot of change as a result. But they haven’t disappeared – far from it, in fact. Our research also shows that well over two-thirds of the tour and cruise markets were sold through travel agents in 2008 – that’s more than $20 billion in gross sales, not too shabby for a distribution channel that wasn’t supposed to be here today.

So let’s leave the mania at the door and see what’s really going on in the realm of social media. What exactly is it? Is it relevant to your business? And if so, how should you begin leveraging it?

First, this isn’t your grandma’s Internet anymore. Social media is more than just a collection of social networks or new technologies. It’s really about a fundamental shift in how people are using the Internet. I think of the old Web -- or “Web 1.0” -- as the simple migration of conventional media and commerce models to the new Internet channel. Webmasters publish content just like newspaper and magazine publishers. Retailers sell their products online, just as they do in their stores. And “surfers” (remember that term?) would seek information on search engines and consume content.

Enter Web 2.0, or what I prefer to call the “Social Web.” The emphasis here shifts from selling, searching and consuming products to connecting with others and exchanging content. “Surfers” and “consumers” have become generators, collaborators and commentators. There’s no better example of how the Web has changed than to look at how the ranks of the 10 most visited Web sites has shifted from 2004 to 2009. While several big names remain the same -- Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Amazon, eBay -- there are some very big differences.

So who’s out in 2009? Search engines, portals and content publishers like Ask Jeeves, Terra Lycos, About and Monster. Who’s new in 2009? Social networks (MySpace, Facebook), video sharing (YouTube) and Wikipedia, the collaborative online encyclopedia.

What does this have to do with your travel agency? Well, you know as well as I do (probably much better) that travel is social. Travelers love to share their experiences – good and bad – with friends, family, their travel agents and even strangers. Seventy-eight percent of U.S. travelers say travel creates experiences that they inherently enjoy discussing. Some social media, such as traveler reviews and photos, has become hugely influential. But the direct impact of social networks is not clear. Only 22 percent of U.S. travelers indicate that social networks are influential in the travel planning process.

That said, the potential is huge, and at PhoCusWright we expect that 22 percent to increase significantly in the years to come. Growth in online social networks over the past few years has been astronomical and shows few signs of slowing. And it’s not just teenagers and college kids anymore. More than a third of U.S. adults now have a profile on an online social network (up from just 8 percent in 2005). The number of people age 35 and up on Facebook has exploded over the last 18 months, from just a few hundred thousand in October 2007 to nearly 10 million as of February 2009.

So while there is definitely some mania around social media today, this data makes clear that there is some substance to this story as well. Adults are increasingly using social networks to connect with friends, family and people with common interests. So if you think social networks aren’t for you, or that your clients don’t use them and that email works just fine, please re-read that previous paragraph and think back to the early 1990s when email was the hot new thing for college kids and computer geeks. How important is email to your business today?

The best travel agents today are not just travel experts, but also masters of relationship marketing. Social networks represent a powerful opportunity for travel agents to engage their clients and leverage the network effect. Social networks also have the potential to level the playing field, enabling travel agents to engage in the conversations taking place online, leverage their expertise, and take on companies with bigger marketing budgets.

I presented some of the information in this column at CLIA’s cruise3sixty conference in Fort Lauderdale in April. It was great to see an audience (about 600 CLIA-member agents) so enthusiastic about the topic and so eager to learn. It was also great to see that more than a third of attendees were active on social networks, and nearly 20 percent indicated they are realizing a return on their investment, according to an informal audience poll.

A lot of attendees came up to me afterwards and asked: “How do I get started in this?” That’s another column – or series of columns. In fact, I recently Googled “Getting Started on Facebook” and got 21.3 million results. “Marketing on Facebook” generated 72.8 million.

But most important, just make sure you get started. It’s still a brand new medium. The rules are being written – and rewritten – now. Even if your clients are not there today, it’s likely they will be soon. Now is your opportunity to choose to be ahead – or behind – the seemingly inevitable curve of social media. My Mom turned 70 not too long ago and recently “friended” me on Facebook. Go Mom!

Douglas Quinby is senior director of research for PhoCusWright, which offers research and consulting focused on online travel trends. You can reach him at dquinby@phocuswright.com.
 

Reader Comments

As I see it; The difference between an advertisement and the new social networking is: Advertising is one way. They reach out to me, I respond where I wish and I go about in my private domain. No-one has to know who I am. In social media my identity becomes public. The organizers squeeze as much personal information out of me as they can. My identity becomes public and profiled. The information, my personal information, who I am, where I belong to, what-where I buy, eat or attend is being gathered, organized and recorded by huge information-hungry companies. I fear of being profiled. The information about me can be sold, merged, compared and profiled and could eventually be sold or rented to government institutions, very possibly even unfriendly governments. Frankly, I feel less protected when everything about me is an open book. Jacob, NY

To Jacob: It's not paranoia, my Dear. It's happening now. When you complete those surveys online, as silly as they may appear, on Facebook or other portals, that info is already culled and sent to insurance companies and others interested parties. So, when you complete that survey about "What is your real age?" or "What drink are you?", as innocuous as those may appear, they are generating data streams that are fed to interested parties. Wonder why you cannot get health insurance? It just might be the survey you completed on-line that says you NEVER exercise or that you have 3-5 drinks a day. It just means we proceed with caution and only give MINIMAL personal information. Sandy Darley, COSandy, CO

To the reader above. If you 'fear' being profiled create a 'value center' that focuses on what your agency does best. We have done this at http://playasocialclub.com and http://tulumsocialclub.com and in less than a year now have over 500 people that have a product interest in the product we love to sell.Russell, NJ

"I'm not paranoid...it's just that everyone is out to get me." That's the quote I think of when I read these comments. You can choose to share as much, or as little, as you like. If you want to tell the intimate details of your life, so be it...or not. Just like someone might run down the street naked, doesn't mean you need to throw off your clothes and do the same. Get into this century, and learn how to market yourself. Social networks are an effective way of doing just that, for free. Mark, NJ

Yes: web2 is a huge ‘small world network’, connecting services, applications, people, places, ideas and knowledge in unforeseen ways. Adam Smith once spoke about “The invisible hand that guides the market.” The Internet’s invisible hand is evolution, not the balance of demand and supply. I mentioned this in my blog on new order of the web: see http://tr.im/newweb. For readers who are trying to understand the Social net channels See http://tr.im/socialmarketing. It was an internal doc for AXSES which we decided to shareIan, AL

Also - i dont mean to hog the line here - but cant help making a comment about Facebook. 78 million results! wow!, but how is it being used. The applications are most games. My Company AXSES just developed a boookings engine for our hotels and tourism activities using Facebook -http://arcresbookings.com. A first of a kind social marketing channel for travelIan, AL

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