The age of internet brought with itself a new way of socializing, the social media networks. Everyday while scrolling through our facebook and instagram walls, we come across a lot of beautiful places which many times eventually become our next travel destination. Social media has helped market many destinations, that too without an intention of marketing. Everyone who has a presence on these platforms helps both in marketing and in becoming a customer. Today, social media holds a big influence on the travel plans of people.
Customers are the Kings
An incident comes to my mind when talking about the influence of customers. One of my friend had planned a surprise trip to Kerala for her wife with a renowned travel agency. But upon reaching the airport he found out that no ticket was booked on his name, rather only one ticket was booked for his wife. Also, when he called the hotel in Kerala he got to know that no rooms were booked for the couple. All my friend had to do was rant about it on twitter and tagging that companies ‘s social media team’s twitter handle. After that, they gave him a first class flight and a 5 star hotel booking in Kerala, for free. Travel agencies these days go to any lengths to maintain their brand’s goodwill, and a bad review about them, that too for everyone to see on Twitter hurts that. The above story shows exactly how much power social media has given to every customer.
Marketing and Services through the Internet
Other than online hotel booking and the planning of whole trips, the social media part of the internet has been of immense help to many travel agencies. The best example of such social media marketing that could be thought of is Trivago. Certainly, no one has forgotten the face of Abhinav Kumar, the guy who became extremely popular after Trivago’s ad got viral on Twitter and Facebook. Other than that, many travel agency brands run their own social media campaigns where they organize various activities which involve people with them, thus giving them leads. Such campaigns are quite popular among the users of social media sites, and have time and again worked as a marketing technique.
Personalized Techniques
The ITC chain of hotels have proved to be quite creative with their personalized marketing techniques. Whenever a guest tweets about their stay, he or she gets a very personalized welcome by the staff of the hotel. Many social media contests which these brands organize end up with the Twitters of these big brands tweeting personally about the winners and giving them special attention, which is again a good move with which social media can be used for marketing.
Suggestions- Be active on Twitter, and don’t forget to interact with the social media teams of the big travel brands whenever you have any issue, or even if you feel like giving them a compliment. Remember, in today’s age of competition the goodwill of the brand matters a lot and the exposure which these brands get with social media is very wide, that too at some extremely cheap rates.
