The best tips & recommendations direct from Travel 2.0 cies, or my “two cents” for the Travel Community.

Well, during the 2 years running blog Les Explorers, I made some very interesting interviews from CEO and manager in the field of Travel 2.0 and I propose today a “digest” from this interviews and some tips that I receive directly by mail.

You will read tips, rules, advises, reflexion, analyse straight from 13 Travel 2.0 Cies and can go further to their interview (click on the Cie name)

CEO talk about travel community management, DMO’s, User Generated Content, Travel 2.0, digital video, group travel…

If you want to read my interviews in Les Explorers, click on the category “l’interview du pro”, also, I suggest to don’t miss Karin Schmollgruber interview (from Passion PR) and their 7 travel trends.

Feel free to engage the conversation !

Happy reading, happy learning a good trademark !

David Reichman ; TripWiser CEO

Few tips that IMHO will help marketers in our space:

1. New audience old tactics
- In the last few months we have spent a lot of time trying to figure out the best strategy to approach an existing community or to build a new one from scratch. We have analyzed different marketing approaches and noticed that many marketers are just using the same old tactics with minimal changes trying to generate awareness to their products and services. Some old tactics are still relevant but we believe that the rules of the game have changed and we must understand the new rules in order to succeed in this market. So what are the new rules:
- Involve users in the discussion, get them to participate actively and they will market for you.You need to learn how to listen and be open enough to accept their feedback good or bad and show respect by following up and making progress
- Understand the influence of Bloggers and respect them - Bloggers are critical part of the community they are the influencers. They are extremely passionate about their subject of expertise and they invest huge amount of time updating their blogs. Help them to refresh their content and keep their audience engaged.
- User behavior is changing very rapidly and in order to shift direction fast enough you must measure and analyze constantly

The second tip is about hype and trends:
“Skate to where you think the puck will be” A good hockey player does not wait to follow the puck; he skates to where he thinks the puck will be. Very relevant for the Canadians:)
It is the same for us marketers, Facebook is a great example for this phenomenon everyone (including us) are running to the same place with hope to find Gold. At a first glance it seems pretty easy to get to thousands of users with minimal investment, just build a new game and they will come. I found it is very similar to gold in California that was easy to get and free for the taking. But the reality is that most Facebook members have a very short attention span and many popular applications already experience a huge decline in number of active users. So the big question is, where the the puck will be?
Few are talking about LinkedIn and MySpace as the next gold mines, we have decided to take a different approach and invest the time to identify the basic needs of this community in Travel. I can’t declare any wins yet but I’m pretty sure that by addressing those needs we will be part of this community for the long run.

Regards,
Davidr.

Gilles Granger, Vinivi CEO

Tips for hoteliers
- Be the first to know: use google alert, watch review sites, subscribe to RSS feeds for your accomodation
- Thank: your mother used to say: ’say thank you’, it’s a nice principle. Your guest took the time to write a review. Good or bad, you need to thank the reviewer, whenever you can
- React: One bad review ? Take a deep breath, come down and answer. Mistakes are a fact of life, visitors understand. 20 bad reviews ? there is not smoke without fire
- Understand diversity: Diversity is key: reviewers are different wether they come from the US, Canada, Germany or France. Travelers have different habits and needs. Understand that a spanish reviewer can say that the dinner was served to early (spanish dinner time is 10 PM)

Tips on managing a review website
- 1% of visitors add content : Cherish them
- 10% of visitors interact with content: Entertain them
- other 89% non active: Give them what they need
- for all 100%: Humanize: technology is just an enabler

Gilles

Adam Healey, VibeAgent CEO

1) How to create a successful travel community:

Bill Clinton said it best, “Every successful community has three things, whether it’s a university, a sports team, a business, an orchestra, a family; you name it. They all have three things: a broadly shared opportunity to participate; a broadly felt responsibility for the success of the enterprise, whatever it is; and a genuine sense of belonging. ” This advice holds true for developing online travel communities:
- enable widespread participation,
- align individual and community success, and
- help people feel a sense of belonging.

2) How to leverage Travel 2.0:

Travel 2.0 is about participating in a conversation with your customers, and providing the opportunity for them to converse with each other. It’s important to take a holistic, flexible approach to communications in the web 2.0 world. You can’t control the message, but you can shape the environment. If you create an open, honest, transparent platform for communication with your customers, they will reward you for it. It’s like the Sting lyric, “if you love somebody, set them free.”

Adam

Benoit Laurent, BeNoot CEO

The tips to build a travel community:

- Know the different profile of potential users;
- Always consider the average user is a newbie;
- Always lead the community with special events;
- Never do ‘just like’ any other website;
- Be passionate about travel yourself;
- Be insomniac… or you’ll become insomniac anyway;
…That’s pretty much it!

Benoit

Martin Stoll, GoSeeTell CEO

DMOs are realizing that they have to complement their official message and web-presence with a platform where consumers speak. As a user I can find UGC about a destination anyway so why not offer it as a DMO? The usual reasons against it are what to do with negative comments, how to identify fake reviews etc. But look at the upside: what if you have a platform where consumers can share how much they loved traveling to and exploring a destination? What if you can get visitors to become spokespeople for your destination?

For DMOs and Tourist Boards I have four recommendations that are based on all the market research we did:

1. Find a partner
Building an online community is a tricky business and everybody who does it will go through a steep learning curve (we have been doing this for two years and still new things every day). Try to find a partner, who has the technology and expertise in this field - it will save you a lot of time, money and trouble.

2. Don’t be too destination specific
On GoSeeOregon consumers can get information for 90,000 destinations worldwide, not only for Oregon. This might seem strange at first site but it has a good reason. Once you become a member you can use this site to get all your travel information, you do not have to go anywhere else. If the site would only offer Oregon information it would be very difficult to build a long-term relationship with the user. DMOs have to be aware of this problem and find a solution for it.

3. Act now
I am surprised how hesitant DMOs still are to get into social-networking. It is so obvious that consumers want information from other consumers and not only from the DMO. So either you give these consumers what they want or they will find the information somewhere else and you loose the opportunity to interact with them. Every day that you do not offer a tool for people to connect and contribute they will sign-up on other sites and start contributing there. They will build up loyalty to the other site and you will have a tough time to win them over once you have your site up and running.

4. Don’t censor
It takes some guts but as a DMO you cannot censor content that is negative about your destination. You will loose all credibility. If you do UGC, do it 100%.

Martin

Marriane Miao, yododo.com, CEO

Self-trip becomes more and more popular in these two years in Chinese market, the users in the travel social network are very open, kind, warm-hearted to others. All travel experiences are from real person, real traveller, no show, it’s the magic.
About travel 2.0 technologies, Yododo used all these technologies, but technologies are only tools, the target is for better user experience and more convenient service.

Marianne

Jeff Wasson GUSTO CEO

I think the main thing to consider is that the consumer no longer simply want to look at catalogs of information, they want to participate and communicate as well. In a small town with 5 restaurants, everyone in that town knows the good ones and the bad ones, because the communicate. Giving consumers globally the same power of communication via technology shrinks the world a bit, and travelers have more options and there disposal to determine how to best use there vacation dollars.

Jeff

Mark Schroeder Home&Abroad CEO

User generated content is great - but limited. Travel 2.0 places a great emphasis on this type of content, but it is merely a matter of the pendelum swinging to the far side of the arc. We believe there has to be a combination of user-generated and expert content. More to the point: user-generated content reminds me of the Freudian “return of the repressed” - that is, in many ways, it is a “desired” return to the oral paradigm (i.e., where a friend would pass on information about a great place); however, this kind of informal, subjective information is expressed in writing, and therefore its meaning and intentionality is elusive and often masks other agenda.

Mark

Todd Tracey.TurnHere sales manager

While digital video predates Web 2.0, the explosion in popularity of online video is unique to the current Internet marketplace. First, when it comes to travel and tourism, online video allows consumers and companies to tell colorful, dynamic stories to wide audiences at an extremely low cost. As a result, businesses such as InterContinental and Swiss Hotel in Sonoma, CA - both TurnHere clients - can communicate with their customer base quite easily and affordably. TurnHere’s film about the InterContinental Hotel in Hong Kong, for example, provides an entertaining and informative look into the hotel and the city of Hong Kong itself. Travel and tourism businesses that take advantage of new technologies in online video will see big gains, as they will be able to deliver compelling messages to the many consumers they want to reach without overspending.

Online video and Web 2.0 have also empowered the consumer to make smarter travel choices. Whereas before consumers would have to turn to network TV to watch film on most of their favorite travel destinations, today the Internet can easily satisfy their hunger for travel video and, in doing so, give them more comprehensive information about locations across the globe. Combined with the many social networking sites that have sprung up during Web 2.0, online video has turned the Internet into an interactive travel guidebook, where companies and consumers can communicate more easily with one another and, as a result, arrive at a common ground where everyone’s interests are met.

Todd

John Pope, TripHub Inc VP Marketing
We’re re-defining the term “group travel” to include smaller gatherings and groups traveling on disparate itineraries. (The industry has historically, generally defined “groups” as 10 or more people traveling on the same itinerary.) Also, we are focused on existing social networks - your friends, your family, your club, your team, etc. TripHub is not about browsing other people’s trips or finding random people to travel with.

John

John A. Vlahides, 71Miles Executive Editor and Co-founder

People want authentic travel experiences, but don’t have time to do the necessary research to make that happen
Every other travel site is built around air travel, its content written primarily for out-of-towners. Not at 71Miles.
We focus on driving trips-the fastest-growing segment of travel.
The trend is for short trips, but until now there was no single site where you could find information about local travel. The travel sections of newspapers are good, but who can remember where they put a clipping from the newspaper? Now all the info you need to plan a trip is one single place.

John V.

Daniele Beccari, Vice President Europe Isango

There are two key concepts under the label of “Travel 2.0″ with one common outcome: “good news for travellers - good news for good suppliers”.

First, interactive UI technology and faster bandwidth enable online shopping experiences as never before, with much more evocative content such as expandable text, photo slide shows, videos and maps mesh-ups. All of this will certainly help users make more informed decision and force suppliers to be more transparent (good news for good suppliers).

Second, almost real time user feedback and community network effects can affect a supplier’s reputation and business dramatically, in both ways. Once again this will be good news for good suppliers. Travelers will force bad suppliers to close shop.

Daniele

Jens Thraenhart, CANADA.travel, Executive Director of Marketing Strategy and Customer Relationship Management

I think we all agree that a balance between branded destination content and user-generated content creates trust and confidence in consumers - and trust being the gold-dust of the Internet, it is vital to create a strategy that aggregates content from industry partners and enables users to share their past travel experiences.
Web 2.0 is just another buzz-word, but yes, absolutely - I believe that the consumer is in control, and more and more demanding in consuming information. I think the next pieces that will concern tourism marketers are the evolution of media convergence (consuming content via different media channels) and bringing meaning to the web and making it easier for consumers to make sense cut through the enormous amount of information available on the web. Merging the concepts of social networking, media convergence, and the semantic web will be the key to success.

Jens

The best tips & recommendations direct from Travel 2.0 cies
from my post at Les Explorers / Claude Benard

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