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The closest thing resembling to the function of Social Media is actually the table. Social Media swapped the table and serviced the needs of humans to communicate, connect, learn, share and form communities. Why did this happen now? Simply because technology allowed it now.

The only thing that has changed is the way humans’ filter and process information. In fact Social Media have helped humans to do whatever they have been doing since the beginning of time that is “word of mouth” decision making but in a worldwide and enriched manner.

Up until recently communication and marketing was one way, consumers passively received messages and made purchase decisions in an almost linear fashion. This is not the case anymore since consumers or Travelers in our hypothesis tend to self organize their path of decision making through the help of Social Media. Part of what they do with the assistance of the various Social Media platforms is researching, discussing, evaluating, validating and selective purchasing.

• Researching The majority of Travelers (9/10) start researching online when it comes to planning their vacations. It should be noted that search engines (62%) and Hotel websites (55%) are the main online sources that leisure Travelers typically use to plan their trips. Notwithstanding, if we take into consideration that only 14% of the consumers trust adverts whereas 77% trust each other, we can understand that information across the Social Media is far more valued by the customer than the one from the 2 main sources above..

• Discussing & sharing Markets are converged online and interconnected by conversations. They are so congregated and socially propelled that it is no use anymore to segment. It is nowadays

 

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suggested to start perceiving markets as conversations divided into subjects. Discussions and sharing of information are and will be induced. If you do not participate in the discussions as a company you are not actually going to penetrate the markets and you’ll finally lose on marketing, sales and obviously revenue.

• Evaluating By engaging into discussion and drawing actively information, the Traveler becomes

smarter and more organized. The same do the markets that the Traveler belongs to with the added benefit of encompassing increasingly “healthier” content as it is constantly filtered, revised, broadened and updated. Conclusive Social Media become and will continue to be the strongest evaluation tool of a Traveler where nothing can be kept secret good or bad.

• Validating Hospitality services are elusive, meaning that there is little to experience beforehand, as they cannot be sampled or physically examined on a shelf. Taking into consideration that Travelers invest big amounts of money and time on their vacation, it is wise to say that it is a high-risk decision. According to Google research in 2012 Travelers take a shortcut to security as 50% of them based their travel plans on other people’s reviews and experiences. Also, Social Media can have serious post purchase impact. Travelers may validate their choice or otherwise cultivate a remorse effect that can even compromise their experience, i.e. by not receiving the expected positive response from their friends.

• Selective purchasing Travelers based on individual drives can dig in intelligence and create added value by steering their purchases to wherever they believe they can gain more value. In simple words they may choose to book a hotel through a travel agent rather than directly simply because

the travel agent provided successfully other Travelers with additional services regarding the destination (i.e. car rental, tours, etc.) or because the travel agent is linked to a local festival. Some hospitality enterprises have already been appealing to this partiality by introducing concierge or

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guest relations to their Social Media either by presence or in content. For example, Marriott International has launched an online concierge service through Twitter while IHG created a “Social Media Customer Care Team”.

Online reputation, presence and active participation in Social Media is not a fab, it's the new way of conducting business. It is cheap to operate and if used cleverly, it can help beat competitors that are way more powerful. Size and resources do not mater. What matters is presence, interactivity, focused strategies, good quality content and imagination. In Social Media you do not have to be a giant to be giant, you just have to be clever and love your friends to become one.

There are many more points to make regarding the significance of Social Media for hospitality. Certainly, there is no right or wrong answer and I encourage you to respond to this post and add your crumb of knowledge and opinion. You may leave your comments and access the previous issue of Hospitality Mindsets on www.slideshare.net/VassilisXenoudakis.

Thank you for reading! Vassilis X.

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