What’s all this ‘Social Networking’ buzz about, we’ve been doing this forever!
According to Wikipedia a Social Network is a structure made of individuals or organizations that are tied by one or more specific types of relations and serviced by specialized software. In general, social networking services, such as MySpace and Facebook, allow users to create their own profile, upload a picture of themselves and can often create “friendships” with other users. In most social networking services, both users must confirm that they are friends before they are linked. These ‘Social Sites’ are now spilling over to the business world and many industries ar paying attention.
In the travel industry, we have long believed that one of the primary motivating factors in a client’s decision to travel to a destination/resort/hotel is influenced by what their friends say. Think about the times you’ve used word of mouth to help you hire a contractor or pick a new restaurant. Chances are you’ve made some of those decisions based solely on the thumbs-up from a trusted friend. Even to this day, travel discussions at a cocktail party are almost compulsory chit chat. Couples and individuals recount their experiences and give opinions about a trip and the listeners carefully store away the comments for future reference.
We in travel therefore, see Social Networking as yet another techie label on something that has been happening for a long time. But is it.
New travel related Social Networking sites are starting to pop up with regular frequency. The sites are essentially forums for consumers to aggregate their knowledge to an already information packed website. The site then hopes to capture the client with booking tools and incentives at the very moment he is being influenced by the forums. Trip Advisor is arguably the best known; it claims more than 5 million reviews and more than 20 million unique monthly visitors worldwide. Trip Advisor now features various online booking services but it continues to be owned by Expedia.
Call me a cynic (Cynic!) but it seems to me, the more of these sites get created, the harder it is to keep things honest. It would be an easy matter for me to get all my hotel staff to write raving reviews of my hotel and post them, who’s to say who “Tracey from Toronto” is. I also get concerned about membership data going array but these are my personal issues and by no means do they necessarily reflect on Trip Advisor (I’d hate to get them mad at me), I simply question the concept of getting advice from strangers.
If you wanted to learn to fly a plane, would you go online and get consensus from strangers on how to do it or, go find an expert and take lessons. As my buddy likes to say “I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’.”
So, back to the travel expert.
Let’s just say your marketing budget is not quite up there, how do you play the word of mouth game. Advertising copy might entice and editorial coverage might persuade, but word of mouth recommendation as we’ve discussed, more often is more effective than both put together.
Nothing, absolutely nothing works as well as chatting directly with your clients and asking for referrals. Try 5 calls a day, if your clients believe in you they’ll be happy to give you names and numbers. Just make sure you follow up and you can be up 10-15 new possibilities by the end of the day. Oh, by the way, do us all a favour, don’t have someone else call and don’t call at dinner time, you’ll be toast in no time!
Don’t like being that direct? Try building a questionnaire. It gives you a reason to contact your clients and it shows that you care and want to improve your business by asking their opinion. Call your clients or email them and ask for the answers you need to improve your services. In closing be sure to ask them for referral numbers or emails. Oh by the way… it just so happens we have an online questionnaire service. (I know… shameless!)
Behave
Frank
