How Social Media Impacts the Way We Travel

From taking travel inspiration from your friends’ timelines to indulging in meticulous research online for your upcoming trips, social media (and internet in general) has become our go-to guide for putting our holidays together, while completely changing the travel game and how! While you might think that your social media indulgence is only limited to posts, stories, and filters, the reality is that it impacts the way you travel much more! Read on to find out how...

1.  Improved Research Capabilities

Social media platforms like Trust Pilot and Sitejabber for example, offer alternative sources of research for travellers. This is usually done through posts, reviews, comments, discussions and message boards, however, it is all done by other travellers and individuals. There are no actual skewed reviews, no marketing ploys, and no cover-ups. Only honest reviews and posts made by people about their experiences.

“Not to mention the fact that it can also serve as an inspirational tool when trying to come up with ideas for new innovations. Just by reading comments and understanding people’s opinions, you can easily adapt your business to fit their wants and needs” – explains Barbra Degraw, a Marketing Manager at Ukwritings. It’s also important to focus on your advertisements. Thanks for huge companies like Google and Facebook, you can now create targeted ads which can be used to match the demographic of the people you’re trying to get your content in front of.

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2. Faster and More Comfortable Sharing

One of the more modern aspects of travelling is the ability to share your memories and experiences with others. This can be done in a multitude of ways, such as stories, photos, small video clips. However, social media makes it even easier and faster by putting all this at our fingertips, even through websites like Hootsuite and ShareThis.

Sharing information on social media also in turn, opens up new avenues of business, like special photography and video spots, carefully tailored and designed for the needs of the client. Not to mention that existing businesses on the tourist market have an easier time improving and evolving in order to keep up with the expectations of the travellers.

However, if you’re still looking for statistics and how effective this form of marketing is, some surveys have found that over 97% of millennials, a popular travel demographics, will use social media during the time that they are travelling. Of these, 50% use the technology to help meet new people in their hostels or accommodation as well as other people who are also travelling in the city. Back home, 84% of millennials then stated that seeing their friends post about places on social media directly influences their own travel plans.

3. Better Service and Proper Warnings

When it comes to reasons to worry about travelling, customer service is among the top 3. While there are some great experiences and great stories about certain destinations, there are also a lot of horror stories about others, form a customer service point of view. This is possible because of online social media tools, for example, Essayroo and Boomessays, which act as communication tools between readers and writers. It becomes a lot easier to find out where the customer service problems are and what places to avoid, which naturally forced the market to evolve, weeding out the bad businesses from the good. Not to mention the fact that it also opens up channels of communications between clients, prospective clients and actual businesses in a more comfortable way. This usually leads to a constructive dialogue and overall improvements in regard to customer support, customer satisfaction and customer experience.

Read More: 6 Ways in which Technology has changed the way we Travel

4. Forced Travel Agency Diversification

With the new digital age also came in new ideas and philosophies. People don't just want to travel for the sake of travelling nor do they really care that much about the highest level of comfort and luxury that they can obtain. People want an experience, something that they can remember, something that they can write about, something that adds more value to their life overall. If you are a marketeer, it’s time to get creative and start thinking outside the box of how you can get people in, both as a travel agent or an independent booker. For example, if you run a tour, try partnering up with restaurants in your local area so you can offer a full package.

5.       More Personal and More Effective Advertisement Opportunities

There are a lot of small businesses, family businesses and generally small ventures that, while managing to offer great services at affordable prices, are unable to afford large-scale advertisement, or are too small to be considered as viable partners by big travel agencies or travelling chains. “Social media actually balances the scale here because of its promotional capabilities. Everyone has a voice on social media, and everyone can spread the word about anything, including these businesses. Through recommendations, posts and even simple word of mouth, such small businesses have thrived and slowly became sought-after by travellers, especially millennial travellers” – says Edward Lynn, an Advertising Manager at Paperfellows. 

Another good thing to note here is the fact that a business can advertise, on its own, on social media without any actual costs or budgets. It can be a bit time consuming, and it will require a bit of work from the business owner, however it is a good way to gain a bit more exposure without having to deal with extra costs in order to do so. As a marketeer, be sure to look into target markets and demographic statistics that social media platforms provide you, especially when you’re creating content for your pages. After all, a 70-year-old couple will need to be advertised differently to a millennial.