Travel 2.0 websites have become just as important to holidaymakers as brochures and magazines, research has shown.
Real traveller experiences and online stories on community websites – known as Travel 2.0 – are an important part of the decision making process, Prophis eResearch claims.
The research firm believes that this is because many holidaymakers now seek personal accounts and images before making a decision to spend on a trip away.
Stuart Hemerling, senior consultant with Prophis Research, said: “Travel 2.0 community site users tend to come from households with more income and tend to spend more on personal travel than non-users of Travel 2.0 sites who travel.
“They are an important group to understand for travel marketers [and] cannot be overstated.”
The study also found that Travel 2.0 users seek dynamic information that is difficult for tour operators to provide in static brochures.
Tags: travel 2.0, travel research
October 25, 2008 at 12:38 pm |
If you want to see an interesting social content model have a squint at Metrotwin.com. British Airways recently launched this online community that twins New York with London and is fed by a blog network. It’s a social utility serving a niche (admittedly, a *mega*-niche) rather than a social networking site. Very pretty and great content (I would say that, my agency designed it), plus a buzz-based algorithm tracking user behaviour and sentiment, and dynamic ‘charts’ of the best places in both cities. Bloggers and online communities are the real local experts – it’s what many of us now look for when researching a destination or trip – authentic, intelligent recommendations, filtered out from the wall of noise, spam-sites and search cheating. Good relevant blogs (and the most relevant pages within them) are particularly hard to find. Have a look at http://www.metrotwin.com and let me know what you think.
Thanks
Tim
October 27, 2008 at 9:59 am |
Hi Tim
I took a look at this site at the weekend, as I’m off to the states soon I found it really useful and a good idea.