SOCIAL MEDIA IN TRAVEL

Have you ever gone on vacation to a foreign place (when I say foreign, I mean a place completely unknown and one you’ve never been to before)and wondered which is the best place to eat is, what hotel suits be needs, which one maintains hygiene standards etc.? Social media has opened up a window to all this and other concerns that a traveller to a new place may have. It’s the world of reviews where customers express their views that will be heard. No longer will hotels be laid back and "surprise" customers on towels and think that nothing can be done. Vacationers will now be able to instantly tweet, blog, email, post feedback on review sites, capture a video to post on YouTube or viameo share their experiences quickly to their audience and friends thereby creating an image about a hotel they have never been to. How is this different from the normal word of mouth? This is faster, many people can view it ( not just your friends) and more people can support/ reject by their own reviews.

When I go traveling, I’m interested to know the reviews of food joints. If it’s less than 3 stars, I become weary of the place, but at the same time am looking forward to the reviews because it will tell me whether the service I receive is worthy of my time and money. Without anything positive, I know that I’ll move on, no matter how “world famous” the cuisine and food is. This is where sites like OpenTable, Yelp and Thummit come into play. You indicate cost, location, the ability to reserve a table and the menu, the restaurants may tend to do more business or at least provide enough information to eat at your establishment.

If you’re traveling for business, you need to obviously do some planning ahead of time. When traveling for a conference or event, you’ll typically have a “host hotel” that most everyone stays at. But what if you look on Google and see that another hotel is nearby and TripAdvisor or reviews of Google indicate that it has free wireless access while the “host hotel” does not and is of similar price. As a customer, you might be more interested in free wireless rather than paying for it. Jeremiah Owyang makes a point in his article about how hotels should not charge for Internet service. This is probably the most important travel resource and you can bet that most review sites will promote free wireless service for nearby hoteliers. So you bet that social media will affect which hotels are stayed at.