How Social Media Analytics Impacts Travel and Tourism Industry
Ioannis Kopanakis
Co-Founder @Mentionlytics.com | Professor Hellenic Mediterranean Univ. | Scientific Director @HMU Innovation Hub
From social sharing sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to crowdsourced review sites like TripAdvisor, people are browsing the internet like crazy. They seek travel inspiration and validation from their peers on the internet. You too might have seen other traveler’s photos, check-ins, ratings, and many more on social media to plan your itinerary and make the best memories. All this proves that social media has excellent participation of individuals, and it paves the way for next-generation marketing in travel and tourism industry. There is no need for people to wait to interact physically to understand the actual situation of a destination where they are planning to go.
Tourists generally have a little information about the place they are planning their staycation, and they search it on the internet. People use social media and rely on reviews to gather as much information before they finally decide to travel to a certain destination.?Facebook has 2.60 billion monthly active users ?and?1.73 billion users who are visiting the site daily . Moreover, sites like?Trip ?Advisor?have 460 million unique visitors ?and?830 million reviews ?that enable people to seek critical information as they trust these sites. We can say that social media has made a significant impact on a personal and professional level, which has been nothing short of paramount. It has completely changed the way people think and research trips, make decisions, and share experiences.
Need for Social Media Analytics in the Travel and Tourism Industry
There are many reasons that you can’t ignore social media, and businesses need to implement them to grow and expand. Let’s take a more in-depth look at why social media analytics is the need of the hours in the travel and tourism industry.
Capturing and handling data
There’s a lot of data being uploaded on social media in reviews, check-ins, pictures, videos, and many more. All these are just a reflection of tourism that also includes review reports on sites like trip advisor. It sets up trends where the tourism industry goes through diverse policies and methods of promotions.
These data help unlock key concerns that allow travel companies to analyze the pattern and propose tourism promotion strategies that bring massive profits. However, it is all unstructured at the first point, but analytics help to organize by identifying the important aspects. Also, it is segregated in different categories based on priority and need.
Partnership and collaboration
Source:?Zgenmedia
Loyal customers could be social media influencers that can make great partnerships and collaborations with your brand. You can ask them to run social media campaigns for your brand like many companies are doing. Around?17% of the companies are spending half of their budget on social media influencers . This way, social media analytics helps you make better relations, and you can nurture leads and potential customers over a long time.
To reshape loyalty programs
Marketers already know how difficult it is to retain your existing customers, which depicts that loyalty programs are the core of the tourism industry. One trash comment about your brand can impact your business. You will need social media analytics to understand your customers’ opinions at a deeper level as they have tremendous influence.
With social media analytics tools, you can track hashtags across different social media channels, making it easier for travel companies to identify passionate travelers. Also, travelers sharing the perks they get from your brand encourage brand promotion and the general public feels more incentivized to attain those perks.
Social Media Analytics to Track Success Travel and Tourism Industry
When it comes to the travel and tourism industry, the vast number of comments and feedback about your brand gives a larger picture of customers’ mindset, which could prove to be a little challenging to organize. Therefore, social media analytics and social media monitoring come handy. It not only gives an idea of what people are thinking of your brand, but you can also stay updated on what your competitors are up to and what’s trending.
Apart from this, social media analytics offers several other benefits where formulating social media strategies and making informed decisions form key elements. Here are some important benefits that social media analytics has to offer:
Market analysis
Being a smart technique, social media analytics is used to analyze tourists’ attitudes or behavior. Increased recommendations about travel services and the purchase of an exclusive package help to understand the customer’s attitude towards your brand.
Moreover, when customers share their reviews, companies come to know about their experience with them. Social media analytics help to analyze the market quickly; it also aids predictive analysis and comes up with services that exceed customer expectations.
Knowing the customer preferences, you can also guide them in which travel package will fulfill their requirements. Also, the low cost of social media helps companies allocate a substantial amount of their budget to other important marketing related activities.
Building communities
As?social media users have crossed the mark of 3.8 billion users , you can build communities that have similar ideologies your brand has. Many of these social media users stick to it to search for travel destinations and plan their next vacation. You would be surprised to know that around?84% of millennials plan their vacation based on someone else’s travel posts .
Moreover, different social media channels have travel-related pages that people consider before they plan their holiday trips. With the help of social media analytics, you can leverage these platforms to create a community for the tourism industry. Here you can consistently promote your services, bonuses, and other packages that will attract more followers. This way, you will have a better and dedicated community.
Improving online reputation
Source:?Valuepenguin
As you know, people use social media to make informed decisions regarding travel destinations.?34% of people have booked their travel holiday after viewing someone’s social media posts . This makes it apparent that they use social media for reservation, evaluate time, and to find other vital traveling information. You can use social media analytics to measure the intensity of intent and their satisfaction level.
Through social media analytics, you will get to know weaker areas of your tourism services. Make sure that you give room for customers to review and provide feedback online. This way, you conduct more research, discover areas of improvement, and leverage it to drive positive feedback for your brand.
Moreover, consumers are looking for direct answers as they don’t wait to get their concerns addressed. As your brand anticipates prompt responses, your customers will get satisfied, and you will certainly see that your brand reputation has improved online.
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Connecting more clients with the business
The days when customers used to have poor services have gone as everyone is vocal about their opinions. Social media analytics helps analyze these opinions and gives transparency that has made connecting to clients easier and better in the tourism industry. It is one of the most important benefits of social media analytics for the travel and tourism industry.
Sites like?TripAdvisor? and other social media platforms have made it effortless for travel companies to connect to clients on a personal level. Moreover, customers’ beautiful experiences help travel companies get more information before they decide on a travel package that drives more targeted clients. Therefore, social media analytics has made connecting with clients easy, accessible, faster, cheaper, and better.
Identify areas of improvement
According to a study by?the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration , an increase in the quality of reviews is directly tied to a hotel’s ability to increase prices. Moreover, guest reviews are important drivers of booking, according to?TrustYou . Social media analytics plays an important part where it can provide deeper insights other than mere start ratings.
There are different elements travel companies can consider for identifying weaker areas, and one such area is?sentiment analysis . Sentiment analysis reveals the emotion your brand evokes in your customers. Travel companies can identify keywords and phrases associated with positive and negative sentiments, such as descriptions, travel packages, good or bad.
Moreover, social media analytics highlights issues that have never been addressed and help discover new trends to avoid a brand crisis. It helps to identify improvement areas that are likely to have the greatest impact on customer satisfaction. It lets you understand what led to the change in customer sentiments overall.
To get more bookings and conversions
74% of travelers have stated that they use social media while traveling . This has opened doors for a better market where people are already using social media, and you can quickly drive convertible leads. You can use social media to understand what type of content drives leads and boost your top-performing content to attract conversions. You can also use your brand visuals and offer social proof with popular tweets and retweets associated with your brand.
Analyze what impact it has on your customers. If it is loaded with authentic social fans and positive feedback, it will evoke a positive emotion in your customers, and you are more likely to get better conversions.
Discover new business opportunities
Social media analytics facilitate proper analysis of social media conversations taking place over different channels, which can be used to discover new business opportunities and markets. On analyzing customer relations in the airline industry,?it was found an increase in the number of conversations regarding low-cost airlines.
However, such airlines were already popular in Europe, but they hadn’t got a similar response in the U.S. yet. Still, 54% of tweets related to budget airlines in North America were done by people belonging to an age group of 18 to 34. Out of these, 53% of those were from the females. This way, the airlines found a new business opportunity by targeting younger females under the age group of 18-34. They targeted them with relevant advertisements and different social media campaigns that lured this specific demographic in social media conversations.
Social Media Analytics – KPIs Travel and Tourism Industry Should Track
Source:?lyfemarketing
Social media analytics is the only technique that every brand in the travel and tourism industry uses to measure efficiency and productivity. But, the critical question is how you do it? How can you avoid being lost in the data and head in the right direction? The only way to ensure that your brand is on the right track is by tracking the accurate social media KPIs.
Understanding your social media KPIs, you can create an influencing social media campaign that will match your customer’s needs and goals perfectly. Here are the important KPIs that your travel business must track:
Reach
With reach, we mean the number of people who came across your brand on social media. You need to make your presence felt on social media if you want to survive; so, your customers must take notice of your content. After all you are creating content for them. Your reach shows how powerful your message is and how far it has spread. There are several points to consider while measuring the reach of your brand; these include:
Engagement
Engagement refers to the number of times you have engaged with your audience. After reach, engagement is the second most important thing that you must track to understand how many people have connected to your brand. Your meaningful following on social media depicts the depth of your engagement where you get to know how many people are sharing your content, liking it, and commenting on finding it useful. Here are some important considerations that you need to make while measuring the engagement:
Conversion
Conversions depict the number of people who have actually made a purchase from your brand. Making your campaign successful boils down to one important thing that’s called conversions that gives you a clear insight into the number of leads you generate. Knowing just the likes and comments is half the equation while the other half is the ROI it is driving. Here are some key considerations to measure your conversion on social media:
How Mentionlytics?Can Help?
When you belong to the travel and tourism industry, it could be slightly challenging to handle loads of information uploaded on social media. You can do it manually, but it is going to be time-consuming. Instead, we recommend using social media monitoring tools to track customer behavior, preferences, sentiments, competitors, and engagement.
We know tracking key social media metrics could be a challenge, so it’s best to invest in social media monitoring tools like?Mentionlytics . With Mentionlytics, you can enjoy a stress-free time as it offers numerous features that are incredibly beneficial for you, such as:
Apart from this, you can also join in forum discussions, comments, and blog posts to spread awareness about your brand with Mentionlytics.
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