Travel 2.0: Hotel and Travel Social Media Examples

I’ve included a handful of big brand hotel and travel social media campaigns. Hotels and tropical destinations are increasingly looking to social media like blogs, social networking communities, video, and social review sites like Yelp as a way to connect with potential travelers. Travelers are also increasingly looking online, instead of toward mass media like television and print media to find sources. We’ve officially entered the era of travel 2.0. As traditional news paper and print media scramble, it looks at though we are at the tipping point of a new era in communications comparable to the dawning of the printing press. Hopefully this can help you to see and understand the social media marketplace when it comes to airline, hotel, and destination marketing:

Avis Car Rental
• We Try Harder Blog

Best Western Hotels
• Go With Amy Blog

British Airways
• Metrotwin Community: New York and London
• Microblogging with Twitter

Carnival Cruise Lines
• Carnival Connections Social Networking Community

Delta Airlines
• Under the Wing
• Several Video Travel Guides on their You Tube Channel and published on the blog (3 to 4 minutes in length)
• Flickr Photostream

Hotel Indigo
• Hotel Indigo Widget

Intercontinental Hotels and Resorts
• Intercontinental Hotels and Resorts

Jet Blue
• Internal Communications: Social Network to Drive Web 2.0 Communication Initiatives
• Microblogging with Twitter
• Flickr Pool

Marriott
• Bill Marriot’s CEO Blog

National Geographic
• Photography Widget
• Facebook Widget
• Community Forums

Park City Mountain Resort
• Park City Blog
• Park City Twitter

Southwest Airlines
• “Nuts about Southwest” Blog
• Ding Widget which delivers travel discounts
• Southwest Airlines Flickr Group

Starwood Hotels
• The Lobby Blog

Virgin America
• Virgin America Community
• Virgin America Twitter
• Richard Branson blog

Thanks to Peter Kim who compiled the original social media marketing examples list of large companies and brands in all market niches. As an aside, I didn’t include all the National Geographic social media properties, because its not a traditional travel oriented company even though its contents covers similar issues.

What travel and hotel social media campaigns belong on the list?

Travel SEO and Destination Marketing

Travel SEO and Social Media Content Development Strategies:

I’ve been working with a travel marketing client to create an effective social media and travel seo campaign. Recent research from the Journal of Travel Research has revealed that social media and blogging offer unique ways to target customer feelings and an affordable method of destination marketing:

Results revealed that major strengths of the destination were its attractions: historic charm, Southern hospitality, beaches, and water activities. Major weaknesses included weather, infrastructure, and fast-service restaurants. Qualitative results demonstrated that travel blogs are an inexpensive means to gather rich, authentic, and unsolicited customer feedback.

So whether you are promoting a travel destination in Italy, Orlando, or Hawaii, social media offers a great way to reach your unique travel customer without the downsides of interruption marketing or a mass media budget. Here are 12 content development opportunities in the travel and hotel marketing space: (Feel free to add your own in the comments section)

1) Wikipedia style entry. A wikipedia style entry will deliver high utility value, although not always the most link bait esque content. By adding colorful and capitivating vistas, useful maps, and resources.
2) Touring and Visitor Guide. Travel destination guides are extremely useful if written by actual visitors or by locals. If other content creators are chosen, this value is largely lost. Clearly needs to be visual and reviews should probably be one to three sentences. Can develop niche guides for types, intents, or budgets of traveler along most demographics. This will allow you to really set yourself apart in the travel industry. Dividing up your options into 3 page, 5 page, and 7 page guides may be helpful for targeting users and thinking about pricing.
3) Brochure Guide. One pager, similar to what concierges pass out so that the visitor can get a quick overview of the city on one page. By wrapping that content in a visually intriguing package and give visitors a special and valuable look into your travel destination.
4) Travel destination summary. Summary of a hotel, activity, or travel destination. (300 to 600 words)
• You get bonus points for including tips and resources and perhaps a visual element beyond a photo
5) Travel Feature. This is more magazine style writing about the destination, activities, or culture of the region. If its inter-culturally different, some attempt to bridge the language and cultural barriers will be helpful. (300 to 600 words)
• Including tips and resources and perhaps a visual element about the travel or hotel destination beyond a photo
5) Maps for Travel Marketing. Maps increase the ease of Geographical Navigation. Maps and enhanced maps (added links to top 10 or 12 destinations in 3 core categories) Consider creating a Google map for the customers of your airline, hotel, or vacation destination. For instance Vanderbilt provides a great Google map for their visitors. Playing around with Google maps is surprisingly fun and can potentially be great for your bottom line.
6) Be a Resource is a Great SEO Strategy. Aggregated reviews and content (best of)
7) User Generated Marketing. Provides very unique content. Also shows users you care. User generated content (email list, comments, Ning, or Boing Boing style). Also reviews of your service will be helpful. Potential interviews with your clients by seeking them out could be helpful.
8} Be the Source and Keep it Easy. Aggregated or widgetized news of interest to your niche audience. This simplifies your customer’s life and so is perfect travel destination marketing.
9) Capturing the Story of a Travel Destination. Edgy or opinionated travel writer. This falls under or at least can be grouped with the feature above. I guess this is personalized or edgy features.
10) Video is the Future of Social Media and Travel SEO. Video travel journal or review ads unique personal take on a particular vacation or travel destination.
11) Mobile integration. Tips delivered by mobile automatically or by request can be a unique form of travel marketing which helps leverage lifestyle marketing.
12) More Link bait ideas-Links to ipod tracks they can listen to on their mp3 player and language resources. Serves as lifestyle marketing.

Particularly in the case of the guides and features, its important that the reviews are spot on or at least feature a diversity of views about a locale. Intrinsically the more value you deliver, the more talkable your travel destination is and more value your customer is likely to give back to you.

These new efforts offer the opportunity to launch:

• new social networks around your travel destination.
• repurpose some old content for customer service and marketing
• and add partnerships with other travel destinations in the area

International Language Translation has an Incredible Value Add for Travel Social Media
Also, now that you have your content, language translation of your website at an affordable rate can be a HUGE value add to your customers and your business. The travel industry is all about being multicultural, multilingual, and global. This is also a very unique area in which you can create a nice competitive advantage over competitors.

Brand Experience for Better Travel and Destination Marketing

Total consumer experience is sin qua of extraordinary destination marketing. Travel customers are interesting in both comprehensive travel experience and that experience begins with your website. One part of the experience, especially in this down time is the affordability factor. People on tighter budgets are cutting corners on the travel fluff and looking for genuine value. They want travel destinations to deliver a complete travel experience on a budget. Popular travel websites like Farecast and Yapta get this fundamental driver of consumer behaviour. Major brands like Kayak and Sidestep are likewise on board with these recession based travel trends. The better your company does of providing budget price points which meet the customer needs, the better you will be able to success in the recession. Providing those price point options online can help facilitated a seamless customer experience for your customers online.

Travelers also want a customized experience. They don’t necessarily want a blank slate, because often we get overwhelmed by the parketplace of choice. Anyone who as staired for minutes on in the cereal aisle or Blockbuster knows this experience. Tourists need quality, helpful recommendations about their entire trip. This is the best way to ensure that your customers experience quality at every step along their travel journey. Touring websites like Inside Trip, Seat Guru, Open Table, and Zicasso get the importance that customers place on a customized experience. A tailored and customer service rich vacation is inevitably going to create better travel experience and more positive word of mouth behind your brand.

Direct and honest product comparisons drive trust and sales. Travel customers need and want product comparisons. This nicely dovetails with their desire for a customized travel experience. By providing comparisons you can save your customers time and set their minds at ease. One of the reason the mega-travel websites do so well is that they aggregate the information all in one place and provide direct price comparisons for the consumer. For instance travel sites like TV Trip, Trip Kick, and Trip Advisor know that customers really want this type of comparison and add to your overall brand value and customer relation experience.

One prime issue travels are looking for is uniqueness. People travel because they want to get away from normalcy and responsibility. Helping them getting way from normalcy by making your destination unique. I Escape and Unusual Hotels of the World help customize and provide a unique and engaging experience for travelers who are in search of an exotic experience that is outside the usual travel destination box.

Will revisit this post soon….hopefully What is your best travel seo and marketing tip? Where do you see social media moving in the hotel and travel industry?

Hotel and Travel SEO: What is the Return on Investment for Travel Marketing?

Whether your a hotel in Hawaii or a luxurious travel destination in Tokyo, Japan, travel SEO can provide you a better customer acquisition funnel online as well as creating better customer relations by making people lives richer and ultimately easier. Providing reviews, maps, and recommendations in a way that is search engine savvy and pays attention to the relevant search engine algorithms can give you a distinct advantage over your competition.

I’ve outlined what I think are the 12 most important advantages of hotel seo and online travel marketing:

• Relationship and lifestyle marketing. Content about your travel destination for your users helps develop better and more sustainable relationships.

• Create a better marketing funnel. This amounts to a comprehensive marketing analysis and paradigm shift.

• Improved customer service. Its a digital concierge for one tenth the price of what you’re paying your employees now. Increased customer service and relationship branding for long term business relationships.

• Increased SEO Means Business. Increased traffic and search ranking translate in more rooms booked and better relationships with business organizations.

• Expertise has its Priviledges. You become the online destination for information about your locale and a hub for online activity. You become a virtual visitors bureau for the area. How powerful is that for your customers? How powerful is that for your customer relationships? How powerful is that for collaborating and marketing with local vendors?

• A Solution that Pays for Itself. Potential affiliate and advertising revenue. What local venues do you recommend to patrons? Why not make revenue based on your recommendations.

• Efficient Business Communication. Quick, easy, and affordable content management. This value alone is incredible in an age of speed we live in.

• Understand Your Customer in Strategic and New Ways. Increased ability to see and evaluate metrics for your online marketing campaigns.

• Conversion optimization. This is an add on benefit of an increased focus on a full range of your customer user data and online behavioral patterns.

• Content Optimization Means Free Public Relations. Interesting and relevant online PR hooks by creating a relevant and compelling resource for customers online.

• A New Window on Your Customer Base. SEO campaign, the data they create, and the focus they inspire help tapping unparalleled psychographic info about your customers.

• The value of now. Seizing the day now is absolutely critical. Its time to be an industry leader and not a follower. It is 10 times better to act now than playing catch up in 6 to 12 months.

Travel Marketing and Search Engine Optimization
Whether your traveler is searching for a flight for a holiday vacation or for a business trip, the online environment allows you to provide niche targeting in a way that no other travel marketing platform can.

Providing information about maps, hotels, vacation tours, travel packages, and tourist tips can help your customers make better travel decisions. And ultimately potentially travels place great trust in Google results and who they can can create a relationship via social media.

If you need hotel marketing or travel SEO, don’t hesitate to contact us at (615) 974-9662. I look forward to speaking with you and discussing your online marketing strategy. Content is ultimately about communication and at the end of the day communication, trust, and relationships are at the very basis of marketing and all successful businesses.