Convention Special: Travel industry warned not to ignore social media
Travel industry workers who repeatedly question the ROI (return on investment) using social media are like hormonal 16-year-old boys with only one thing on their mind, an ABTA audience was told by a Web 2.0 expert this week.
During a session to which delegates had sat down ready to hear about how to leverage Twitter and Facebook, Charlie Osmond of social media agency FreshNetworks said that to focus solely on how much you would earn back from investing in social media was to miss the point.
“ROI focus drives the wrong behaviour,” he told delegates. “You should be looking at social media as a way to engage with customers, get feedback from them and improve your product.”
British Airways head of UK and Ireland sales Richard Tams said tapping into social media brought all manner of rewards and the airline saw the social landscape altering so quickly that it knew not getting involved was not an option.
“Social media has overtaken porn as the number one activity on the web and if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world," he said.
"There are 200 million blogs out there. We needed to get our brand involved in this and since then there has been a fundamental shift in the way we talk to our customers.”
Tams, a self-proclaimed social media amateur who is a “convert” to the medium, added that he felt social media enabled BA to have a one-to-one conversation with customers, get instant customer feedback and put the BA brand in front of 100m Youtube users and 45.5m Twitter users.
He cited the example of BA online forum Flyertalk as an example of how social media allows companies to engage with customers. Users of the site, generally aviation buffs, had talked about some of the airline’s long-haul fleet they wanted to view so BA bussed them off to see it, engendering customer loyalty.
He also said the airline had used social media to great effect to keep customers updated about the industrial action that BA suffered earlier in the year, with chief executive Willie Walsh starring in videos on Youtube explaining the disruption and a regular Twitter stream about the strike action to as many people as possible.
Tams added the airline spent at least half of its marketing budget on social media.
By Dinah Hatch
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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