Who’s afraid of a little criticism? The shift towards online ‘consumer networking’ is no passing craze

Friday, 04 Oct, 2007 0

TravelMole guest comment by Rob Yorke, digital director at Leeds-based creative agency prego

The internet offers the single most exciting growth opportunity for the travel industry in years.

While travel retail stores are closing, businesses leading the way with so-called web 2.0 technologies, including blogs and user generated content, will be the success stories of the next five years.

Although traditional advertising channels will continue to be the most effective ways of promoting offers, consumer opinions are increasingly influential and being shaped by those of other consumers.

Now, before we go away, we can read the opinions and experiences of fellow travellers across the web. We order lists by user ratings ignoring the unrated ones and we gravitate towards heavily tagged and frequently viewed content.

Rather than fearing that loss of brand control, travel companies should be embracing this movement, as the shift towards ‘consumer networking’ is no passing craze.

However, it should come with a warning; the pressure to ‘invent’ consumer feedback is increasing by some parties – but companies faking user reviews will be bitten hard if they get caught out.

So how can travel companies benefit from these new web services?

Give your users the opportunity to feedback on their travel experience with you (and if your offering is good enough, you’ve got nothing to worry about). Content from websites is also being lifted and re-advertised from site to site.

We should think about the life cycle of our content beyond that of our own site; ask yourself ‘will a reader know where this content originated?’

It’s easy to see why opening up your business to ratings, reviews and criticism is a frightening prospect for most businesses, but refusal to embrace it should NOT even be an option.

Look at it another way; the savvy shopper is actively looking for consumer opinions before buying anything and may draw negative conclusions if consumer opinion can’t be found.

Embrace it – you might be surprised with the value of the information you get back.

Phil Davies

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