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TravelMole eWire Comment – Dismiss Twitter at your peril
Tuesday, 27 Feb, 2009
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TravelMole eWire Comment by Dinah Hatch
The first statistic I saw at the Travel Technology Show a few weeks back was, inevitably, a gloomy one.
Online flight searches were down 42% last year. Oh dear, I thought, this is going to be a miserable two days, listening to how we are, as my mother so succinctly puts it, off to hell in a handcart.
But the speaker who mentioned this statistic was from a digital marketing agency and, he assured his audience, it wasn’t all bad news.
He went on to say that paid and natural search is still generating a positive ROI – the absolute holy grail in these tough times.
In fact, the digital marketing agencies, and there were plenty of them buzzing around the show, had plenty of positive messages to put out. They reckon travel companies who are suffering right now (yep, that’s everyone) need to look long and hard at how their brand is being talked about on the internet and turn what they see into a positive.
That means waking up to the reality that brand awareness is no longer a linear matter whereby a travel company advertises, punters take in that message and decide whether or not to act upon it. Now your customer may stumble across your brand though a myriad of ways, be it peer reviews, friend recommendations or a chance tweet on 2009’s hot social networking space Twitter.
What’s important is that travel companies sweep the internet for mentions of its brand, engage with what’s being said and develop a strategy to help make their product better and energise people talking about it to promote the brand for the good. And in a time when you can’t open a newspaper without feeling depressed, it’s good to hear that there are some positive strategies out there.
Talking of Twitter, I’m with Stephen Fry and Obama – two of its biggest fans. There’s no more immediate way to vent your spleen about a company’s poor product or customer service than by bashing out 140 characters and broadcasting your complaint to the online community.
National Express’ utterly hopeless customer service and mean spirited approach to cancellations (oh how he enjoyed himself, that call centre worker who rejoiced in telling me I had missed the 72-hour cancellation period after which no refunds would be made by a matter of minutes) compelled me to tweet about it.
I wonder whether they will see it? In times like these,
I find it amazing that travel providers like those guys aren’t upping their game and trying to keep their customers happy, instead of treating them like dirt.
Neil Maclean, who runs digital media agency Smallmedialarge, sees massive potential for travel providers who use Twitter.
He told a Travel Technology Show audience: “Twitter asks you ‘What are you doing now?’ and from a travel perspective this opens up all sorts of opportunities.
"If you run safaris, have your tour guide tweet about the big game he has seen this morning and get him to add a picture to really bring to life his experience.”
So the next time you hear someone dismiss Twitter as a fad, just a medium for people discuss to talk about what they had for lunch, think again.
Dinah
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