Sat in the spotlight on the Travel Bloggers Summit Panel
By Darren Cronian on Monday, March 16th, 2009

When I told work colleagues what I was getting up to in Berlin, the shock on their face was quite amusing. For three years I have written this blog, hidden behind my laptop, but this year I wanted to step out of that comfort zone.

Sat in the spotlight on the Travel Bloggers Summit Panel

Offline, I am not the best communicator, I lack confidence in myself but there’s probably no bigger stage in travel to promote this blog and myself than the PhoCusWright ITB conference and I cannot explain how nervous I was getting up on that stage.

The three social media trends for 2009 I highlighted are:

Mobile

With the G1 Android phone and Apple iPhone I think we have the telephone technology to use mobile in travel. The thought of GPS picking up your location and then being able to find tourist information then taking photos and sharing this ‘live’ with family, friends is brilliant.

I like the idea of searching for local experts near my location and asking questions or sharing my knowledge of the destination. The downside of mobile is the ridiculous roaming charges that travellers are forced to pay abroad.

Twitter and sharing experiences

As a consumer I am more likely to book a holiday, or hotel with a company that is ‘in my face’ on the same networks online that I frequent on. I know I can ask questions and that they will communicate with me.

For me Twitter is the perfect communication tool, I can ask questions and people help me. I had some spare time to roam around Berlin. I wanted to see Brandenburg Gate, so I asked for the nearest tube station and I received a number of responses.

I found Brandenburg Gate, and took photos, and shared them with my ‘followers’ which meant we could share the experience together. I sent photos to family and friends back home, and as my mum said, she felt like she was there, following my Berlin experience.

Consumer interaction

I know myself that it is very easy to hide behind desk and most companies are exactly the same. So when they’re told to interact and socialise with potential customers online, they freeze, panic and prefer to be anti-social.

The travel industry will have to learn, like me, to become more social and realise that consumers are used to interacting online. The younger generation are so Facebook, Bebo and MySpace obsessed, that they will expect companies to interact with them.

I am interested to hear your thoughts on my three trends.

Implementing the trends

The second part of the summit was about how you would implement the panels trends and I felt it was all a little over my head. Having never worked within the travel industry I struggled to get to grip with the terminology and jargon.

I made the decision before the summit that I would keep quiet rather than say something stupid. My head was all over the place. I couldn’t concentrate, and my heart felt it was going to come out of my mouth but whilst it was a relief when it was all over, I enjoyed the experience.


Related posts

Please enter your email address to receive my free newsletter

 



10 responses to “Sat in the spotlight on the Travel Bloggers Summit Panel”

Joe Buhler | 16 March, 2009 at 9:58 pm

Darren,
Great posts from the blogger summit. I enjoyed them a lot. You did well and understand the business side of the industry quite well. I’ll continue to try and clear up some of the jargon. Keep those posts coming.
Joe

Report this comment

Maggy Sainsbury | 17 March, 2009 at 9:31 am

Darren,
There’s a website that might help you understand the world of never ending travel jargon! Its being continually updated by the global travel professional community so should hopefully answer some of your questions. http://www.traveljargon.org. Trust it helps.
Maggy

Report this comment

Julia | 17 March, 2009 at 10:26 am

Interesting about how to move with the times. It’s a real issue for the trade, to provide the right website to suit all clients – age ranges from 18 to 90 plus. Today we have the vast majority of the the younger generation using FB, MySpace, but this extends to those who have been using the internet for 20 years especially those who wish to grasp new technology, at any age. I think the younger generation are selfish in what they expect the internet to provide for them and their needs. Everything has to be instant and the thought process like twitter has to be done in 140 characters. Now now now, me me me.

Also there are thousands of silver surfers, who want simple sites and can remember the days without the ‘world wide web’ (20th Birthday this month). Some people don’t even own a PC or wish to learn how to use one, or simply want to speak to a real person when they book something. Some have no idea what google earth is. They need to be thought of too, they have holidays and probably have more money and time (as they aren’t on the internet all day checking out google earth) to spend on them.

Anyway. Keep up the good work Darren.

Report this comment

Clive Wilmer | 17 March, 2009 at 1:44 pm

I honestly dont get the Twitter thing, where do people get the time, honestly. There arent enough hours in the day as it is; isnt it just another time sink?

Report this comment

Happy Hotelier | 17 March, 2009 at 2:38 pm

Darren, Young man,

Lol…you talking about the younger generation….

Report this comment

Julia | 17 March, 2009 at 3:04 pm

Clive I don’t get twitter either (I have tried twitter and FaceBook), I really don’t care if someone is feeding the cat, reading a blog, or is sitting on a train and has seen a pig fly past.

It’s all becoming very Big Brotherish for my liking – who’s watching who (mostly doing very dull things). I think I am turning into a new breed of 21st century luddites.

Report this comment

Kim Kinrade | 17 March, 2009 at 3:34 pm

Hi Darren,

I was at ITB representing a Nova Scotia tour company in 1998 and it was 50 buildings full of travel trade showings. The enormity of ITB is beyond description and the internet wasn’t that big in tourism marketing at the time.

Report this comment

Pete Meyers | 18 March, 2009 at 5:12 pm

Hi Darren -

Good points above (and I’m sure you were great on stage…everyone gets nervous, perfectly natural.)

Curiously, did you use an iPhone / Android or another device to tweet from the road or your laptop?

Of the trends you mention, I think the future launch of Blackberry’s App Store will be a huge boost for consumers who want mobile applications without requiring a switch to a different carrier or platform.

I agree that Twitter will continue to play an increasing role in travel research and discovery. Similar to commenters above, I was very skeptical about Twitter in the past, but made a committment to use it consistently for a month. After a month, I realized how useful it is for uncovering content I otherwise wouldn’t have seen and become acquainted with people I otherwise wouldn’t have “met.” I’m hooked.

That said, I think travel companies will begin consolidating the volume of profiles they maintain on 3rd party sites to reduce the strain of managing them (and the corresponding distraction.) Facebook but not MySpace. Twitter but not Yammer. StumbleUpon but not Digg. You get the picture.

One other trend to throw out there, too, is the increase of low cost HD Flip Cams that will continue making travel videos of higher quality – and be able to be easily uploaded, well, everywhere!

Report this comment

Darren Cronian | 24 March, 2009 at 3:31 am

Apologies for the lack of replies to your comments, it’s unlike me :)

@ Joe

Thanks for the kind comments. Yes, the jargon was a bit of a problem for me, but, I learnt alot during ITB.

@ Julia

I am sure I read somewhere that the highest percentage of users of Facebook were females, aged 55+ – not sure if that is true but what I like about Facebook is that all generations are using it, and thats what makes it a powerful tool for travel companies.

Interestingly though, the word Facebook very rarely came up in any of the sessions during the bloggers summit. Last year apparently it was mentioned all the time. The word on the street was very much ‘Twitter’ but next year they will be something new for us all to talk about.

@ Clive

The advantage with Twitter is that you can interact with companies. Only today I was having an interesting conversation with someone from the Times. I would not have had that discussion without Twitter.

@ Happy Hotelier

Ha, I am feeling old at 36, but I think its a good point that the “younger generation” i.e those not yet purchasing holidays are active on Facebook, Twitter etc. So in the future companies will have no choice but to interact online, because they will expect it, and those that don’t interact will die off.

@ Peter

The point of Flip cams is a good one – forget those boring written hotel reviews and rants, people will be recording their own nightmare holidays, horrible hotel reviews, and ranting on video and uploading them for all to see.

Report this comment

Carl | 27 March, 2009 at 5:52 am

Great post,
Completely understand the dry mouthed moments onstage, sure given your clarity on this blog you did just great.

Agree with many comments Darren, the newer mobile platforms for content delivery (and systems interrogation) such as IPhone / BBerry apps as well as new communication platforms like Twitter are going to provide massive opportunities for companies to better engage with travellers. And also for travellers to travel better.

I’m not sure how quickly many traditional style companies, whose balance sheets are likely hurting with the downturn and are likely being kept busy looking at their KPI’s, will adapt in the short term but there definitely some who are involved.

I also understand and do somewhat agree with many here who have commented that much in social media today seems to be a big time sink so I’ll add my 3 thoughts about the things i’d like to see for Travel Social Media;
- Meaning and Value
Give me relevancy, help me have meaningful interactions, about the things I want to talk about, with others in an easy, usable, timely manner. Give me tools to help me semantically read, tag and easily filter the fluff from the good stuff. I don’t know how people cope with a Twitter stream of even 200 followings.
- Aggregate my world.
Bring it all together, i want to be able to integrate my FaceBook conversations with my Twitter conversations with my TripAdvisor recommendations, with my Yahoo answers, with my Flickr pics, my blog, my frequent flyer profile and so on. I dont want to have to search for it, retype it or re-enter my preferences, I want to be able see it or share it all from one beautifully designed easy to use interface. This is a big one and I doubt we will see it soon for reasons of dataportability and security. FriendFeed is a start but it’s interface is pretty bland. Do you know of any others doing this?
- Cross platform and Convergence
Back to your IPhone comment (including BBerry, Android etc) i want my world to be converged and cross platform. If travelling I want to be able to ask a question from my phone to the internet (Twittersphere) like you did and get an answer from there as well as get the answers from trusted sources from my social networks (from what ever channel they might be on mobile/web) who are relevant to the question and be able to buy/book a relevant product (relevant as it knows my personal preferences) if need be all in the same session.

It’s a mouthful I know. Cheers Carl

Report this comment