The growing popularity of social media today has made it a very potent marketing tool. Various enterprises across the business vertical have begun leveraging the spiraling patronage of popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to promote their goods and services. The travel industry is no stranger to this new age marketing medium. According to the annual Bigmoutmedia travel report, social media accounted for 8% of the total budget allocated for marketing in the travel sector. This figure has surpassed email marketing, which accounted for 7%.
A closer look at individual sectors revealed that hotels and travel agencies spent 8% on social media marketing. Email marketing continued to dominate in the airline industry however, accounting for 10% against 6% on social media. The interactive marketing medium is turning out to be a lucrative proposition among consumers. According to a survey 40% of travelers in the UK are using social media to plan their holiday. These impressive figures stem from the fact that 89% of the consumers who used social media had a very positive experience, while 23% have admitted to using it more often in 2011 than in 2010.
Although skeptics rue that its popularity might diminish, 48% of the industry believe that social media will be more important than PPC marketing in the next five years. According to a survey by WTM, 22% of the travel sector use social media as a revenue generator while 27% have decided to go ahead with it. Keeping these figures in mind, it is prudent to say that social media will become a pivotal marketing tool for the travel industry in the years ahead.
