Social media has been of great influence when it comes to how firms communicate with and market products to their customers. This has particularly been felt in the hospitality and tourism industry. Moreover, the introduction of the Internet has also helped the trendy nature of these social media networks.
You can see the impact by how tourists search for a potential location, the dressings to wear, and other factors that can help them feel comfortable when they reach their destination. The article will deal with how various social media outlets have influenced tourism over the years.
Transformation of travel research
One of the greatest ways social media has impacted tourism is the transparent nature of online feedback. Now you can easily see various travelers use Google and other search engines to look into travel locations.
Moreover, they can also check for possible hotels, motels, and accommodations they can use. During booking, 90% of Millennials take their time to plan their traveling activities based on information they get online.
There are various ways this information can be retrieved which include travel communication, tourism pages, and online review sites. Don’t also forget that various travel influencers have accounts on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram where they share useful information about places you can stay.
These social media channels help with good pictures, ratings, and reviews of places tourists and travelers can stay. The experiences that people share on their social media handles offer a first-hand experience of a tourist destination they have to offer.
It has become more transparent to access travel content from the Internet, which can either encourage or discourage a guest to visit some places.
Increase in Social Sharing
Everyone on the Internet has always felt happy when they are sharing their pictures and videos. What the various social media sites have done is to make it easy and amplify people’s choice to share travel experiences.
Also, more than 95% of Millennials share personal pictures and videos of all their travel experiences online. This helps build good peer-to-peer content which inspires potential tourists. This trend has been noticed by several hotels and resorts that have started running online campaigns which ensure they are compensated for showing their guest Internet activities.
Some hotels and resorts in France show their guest wedding events (with their permission, of course) pictures rather than staging one. This type of campaign has encouraged many people to take beautiful photos and hashtag them to get more views online.
Improves Customer support
Social media has helped transform customer service and satisfaction in various companies. Many brands have a unique social media presence which they use to get customer reviews. These social media channels are avenues where they can ask their customers about their experiences and get immediate feedback.
When a customer has any issue and makes their complaint online, they build a good reputation for satisfying their customer online. Various top airlines have used this medium to provide a bond with their customers around the world.
Moreover, when Instagram, YouTube and TikTok are used to contact a company, more than 70% of customers expect a response within 6 hours. This quick customer response via social media helps them humanize their brand and show that customer satisfaction is their objective.
Social media has severed as a vital tool to get useful information from customers on how to improve their services. Motels, hotels, and resorts have always used their accounts to listen to their customer’s grievances and how provide exceptional service.
Restructure Travel Agencies
With social media, there has been a positive impact on the regrading of major travel agencies. With the easy information flow and smooth self-service booking by these travel agencies, there have been several restructures done.
Now, most travel agencies are digital in line with the trend in the entertainment industry. However, this doesn’t mean all travel agencies have gone digital as a handful of them are stuck using 50–65% of bookings offline, but many have digitized their travel bookings.
Furthermore, various agents working with these travelers need to consider how they can make their customers key to these new ways of operation. There are now many self-booking features that might remove using agents for travel bookings in the future.
Loyalty rewards system
Many markets know that getting fresh clients is far more expensive than retaining old ones. This has made offering loyalty rewards to customers very important in the travel sector. Social media has played a huge role in how various hotels loyalty promotions are designed to keep existing clients.
More clients are now aware that the information they share has a huge influence on social media. This has made many entitled to various benefits for offering good feedback. You can see that there are many mouth-watering loyalty rewards that customers get for giving hotels a good review.
Also, points accrued from this positive feedback can be used when next the customer visits the place. Many tourist destinations now integrate many social media shares, which help with marketing their services to millions of people online.
The impact of social media can’t be quantified in the tourism industry. It has increased the visibility of various tourist brands and attracted more customers to their services. More people online can now easily search for information on the most entertaining places with just a click of a button.
What is influence marketing, what are the benefits and objectives ? Read this article to know more about it