Second part of the Final Exam



1) Social sharing sites

The world is always on the move, and the Internet has revolutionized the marketing techniques for many companies. We live in the times when “virtual becomes real”. People are more and more familiar with utilization of the Internet and with what’s going on there. The new generation acquires this knowledge from their childhood. People demand and share information. The travel sector has had a great influence of this ‘sharing’ trend. The travel 1.0 was price driven. The travel 2.0 have made it possible to easily compare the price as well as added other significant factors for comparison. People are looking for better experience.

Social sharing sites are the sites where people, individuals, organization, associations can share their ideas, videos, pictures, opinions, experiences, news, etc. This are really interactive sites, where people can link to each others site, create cross links, forums etc. The most popular is MySpace, an online community that lets people meet their friends' friends. It allows share photos, journals and interests. Mer personally I use LiveJournal, as all Russian people use it.

I have already written in my blog before about social networking sites, and the Social Networking 3.0, that people start talking about. So I will recopy a party of this post, since I have found a lot of interesting information

Nowadays, we talk about the third generation of social-networking technology has hit the Web, and it's about content as much as contacts.

The idea of social sharing sites at the beginning was to let users build online profiles that advertised their interests and to help them connect with friends and friends-of-friends around one of those interests -- whether it be finding a job, making a sale, or repairing an old motorcycle.

Not so popular at the beginning, now it has become a real business. Now members are using their networks for practical purposes, like finding job candidates, locating business and legal services, coordinating group activities, promoting its company, association or organization. It connects people and it has become really a personal media, and it is free!!!

iMeem, relatively new social network company hopes to attract members by building all their activities not around a virtual representation of their social network, but around instant messaging technology. Indeed, the company's name is a combination of IM, for instant messaging, and "meme," meaning an idea spreading through a network. In terms of technology use they are leapfrogging all the older competition.

iMeem is built around a buddy-list window that shows a user which of her friends are online. From that window, she can send and receive instant messages, join group chats, keep a blog, and share photos, videos, podcasts, playlists, and the like with other users using a peer-to-peer system related to the technology behind the original Napster.

Wikipedia gives a list of social networking sites.

2) The influence on the customer's choice.

The customer now is much more informed, it can compare more easily and doesn’t want to be cheated. Customers want more experience at a lower price. Companies are obliged to adapt as to what a customer wants, who is now a master and is imposing the rules of the game.

The companies have to be completely transparent and create the customer confidence.
The challenge now is not only get customers to try your product, but also make them loyal, as the customer tends to switch the brands more often than before. The customer is more prudent than before, they check travel sites 35 times over 90 days before they book. They want to be sure of what they are buying before they chose.

Customers become more and more of the marketing tactics, so for them and independent opinion (word of mouth) worth much more than the advertising.

Marketing segments are dead. Customers are gathering by their interests and hobbies. They are empowered as never before. This article supports this assessment.

Actually I was looking through a bunch of article that you can find them all here.

3) What can hoteliers do?

Hoteliers can integrate to social networking in their business sites. To enhance the image, be more customer-oriented, has an immediate honest customer feedback, to constantly improve the quality. The enterprise transparency is essential in today business world. Companies can create forum, video, picture and experience exchange.

But first of all, hoteliers must accept the reality of the power of the consumer to control the selection and purchase of all travel industry products.

Second, in the words of Joseph Buhler of The New York Times: accept, embrace, innovate, join. Those who do not take this position will probably not survive!

Third, become acquainted with the process; don’t defer management, knowledge and participation solely to the IT staff.

Try to integrate following techniques: Blog, podcasts, RSS feed, C2C, Travel 2.0 , know what social Networking sites your customers use.

People now share their plans and dreams of travel, for example. This interactive process of the online travel community will continue to grow as the consumer’s power of communicating conditions the offering of the travel product.

Interactive management of technological tools by the consumer is indispensable for the when, where, why and how of the travel experience. According to PhoCusWright, technology is easy; management of it by the consumer has change the face and usage of the Internet to dreaming, planning and sharing opinions about the potential destination.

Hoteliers can also use buzz marketing, as in create different videos, imagine stories , curious ouctures, maybe even anekdotes or cartoon movies and put it on the internet. It should be something cusious or funny so that people are going to send it to each other on the chain letter.


TripAdviser (get the truth, then go) and Gusto (travel + lifestyle) have already understood this.
Tablet Hotels have real-time customer ratings.
Who is who in hospitality, a valuable online networking platform for the hospitality industry
The Hoxton Hotels who allow customers to leave their feedback.


4. Can hotels effectively establish an online conversation with customers?

Hoteliers have to understand that social networking sites and technical tools create wonderful opportunities for them to get their message to the people who are most likely to buy their products, as well as it creates of course a lot of challenges. Hoteliers should look for the social networking sites that reach just the customers needed and communicate with them.

Another thing they could do is that they can set up the alarms to be informed of anytime that the hotel was mentioned. And if the negative feedback is found good managers will try to correct the mistake. You were telling us the example during the class when manager corrected the mistake, and then the person who was claiming wrote about the fact that he was offered recompense. This creates a really positive opinion.

The Web 2.0 and social networking appears to be a solution that will bring about the greatest possible efficiency to marketing and advertising spending. It is bringing user-generated content to the Web site. As I have already mentioned that before, the customers become impervious to traditional media. Over one-third of social networkers spend less time watching television and reading newspapers and magazines. The peers’ opinion becomes more important than any other source of information.

The social networks have a huge power. It is a kind of a new "door" for advertisers to enter where they can find a discrete, highly-targeted slice of the population to which their advertising messages would have the most appeal and would most likely result in their products being purchased. The challenge here is to "identify the social networking sites whose 'communities' of visitors closely match the profile of their target customers and prospects."

Sure all that takes a lot of time, but the market is already responding to this need, and the first outsoursing comapnies star appear that will do the analysis for the hotels.

Another effective way is to integrate the possibility of social networking within your proper site. It enhances image of the transparent company and allows even more leverage the advertising budget.

P.S. Just for you to now, I have had a lots of technical problems of posting this blog. There was really a mess with all this links, Blogger has a lots of bugs, it was deleting parts of my text and mixting up the links.