Carving niche as a global player in the travel meta-search category

IN-DEPTH: At a time when web search giants are getting deeper into the travel meta-search category, Singapore-based Wego is set to expand its business globally with the launch of 34 new country sites in 20 different languages. The company’s newly appointed CEO Ross Veitch spoke to EyeforTravel about his company’s plans, and Google’s travel search offerings in detail.

By Ritesh Gupta

The travel meta-search space has witnessed the entry of several new players over the last couple of years. With Google making its foray into the category last year, it is believed that some of these new entrants will crumble, and the relatively mature players will consolidate and improve upon their offerings.

The spate of developments in this category, be it for new ventures or new features, has resulted in intuitive search solutions and tools that promise to change the way consumers search for travel online. Efforts to revolutionise travel search aren’t new but online offerings are just getting better now. Overall, customer expectations are driving changes in the online travel business. Travellers want fast shopping whenever and wherever they feel like shopping, better selection and attractive prices/ deals to go with it.

As far as competition is concerned, a section of the industry believes that Google will represent a bigger threat to OTAs than to current meta-search companies. However, for meta-search players, the danger of losing traffic to their websites and mobile applications, too, can’t be ruled out.

On their part, meta-search companies acknowledge Google’s prowess. Google changed from being gatekeeper to many to becoming a formidable competitor.

“I think the web search giants getting deeper into the travel search vertical was probably the most significant development of 2011 - Google with the launch of their Flights and Hotel search products and Baidu with their investment in Qunar,” Singapore-based travel meta-search site Wego’s newly appointed CEO Ross Veitch told EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta in an interview.

Veitch, who is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Travel Distribution Summit Asia 2012, to be held in Singapore (May 9 -10) this year, added that given the value of the travel search vertical, the industry can expect similar developments in 2012 and beyond.

Expansion

Wego is set to expand its business globally with the launch of 34 new country sites in 20 different languages, targeting almost all developed or emerging travel markets worldwide.

Veitch mentioned that the company, in its analysis of its user data, found that a significant number of travellers from other parts of the world, in addition to the Asia Pacific region, have also discovered Wego and are relying on it to search for flights and hotels. “This is why we’ve decided to localise our product fully, to better service the needs of these users,” said Veitch.

Wego’s primary focus is on Flights and Hotels meta-search with a secondary focus on Packages and Deals aggregation.

The company is currently focusing on filling the content caps in some of the newer markets where there are new airlines and OTAs to add. Also, it is currently in the middle of a design overhaul. “Where we do have some catching up to do is with regards to our mobile site and apps. We’re hiring mobile product managers and developers (at this juncture,” shared Veitch.

New Features

From the travel meta-search category’s perspective, Veitch says the main focus is in doing the core stuff better (i.e. more partners, accuracy, more 3rd party data, being faster). “Beyond that the main areas of cumulative focus seems to be on mobile site development, app development, UI innovation, social graph integration…” added Veitch.

Wego has been incorporating several new features that had been in development for many months. For instance, from its data-mining exercise the company found that users from different countries had clearly differentiated preferences for hotels in a given city. Using the results of this exercise, Wego now sorts hotels in a given location based on how popular they are with local users. Another new feature is pertaining to demand for a tool that will help travellers who have flexible schedules identify the cheapest dates to fly.

Wego has also developed a tool that shows schedules for all direct flights worldwide, optionally including code-sharing details and importantly listing the aircraft type for each flight. Once the user has picked a flight, he/she is only one click away from checking fares and seat availability.

Competition

Existing players highlight that finding and presenting accurate and comprehensive flights information is what this business is all about.

Even though Google is expected to deliver, it is being pointed out that the problem of obtaining that data hasn’t, and won’t be, completely solved by any one single player in the future (e.g. unbundling, merchandising, country-based pricing, direct connect trends etc). The industry is looking at their own technologies, rather than being reliant on ‘traditional’ data-acquisition routes.

Google’s travel search offerings

Veitch also spoke about Google’s offerings in this space in detail:

Google Hotel Finder - This has quite a few interesting features. I quite like the keyboard shortcuts and the 3-panel layout. The “price compared to usual” is a nice idea borrowed from the old Farecast but I think it could be significantly improved. Polygon based filtering is cool but I don’t see many people actually using it. These things are all relatively superficial though.

The really innovative thing about with Google’s Hotel Finder (and the closely related Hotel Price Ads project) is that booking partners are required to provide Google frequent data dumps that allows Google to maintain a mirror of each partners' inventory in a similar manner to what ITA Software does with airline inventory. The advantage to this is that Google is able to provide lightning fast responses to queries because the query doesn’t go beyond their own data centres.

The disadvantage is that I suspect many partners just aren’t able to produce the required data sets. I think this partly explains why only a handful of the biggest hotel sites are currently present in Hotel Finder. The other disadvantage is that non-common queries can’t be accommodated because there’s no ability to query the partners in real-time beyond the data they’ve pre-provided to stock the cache. Try searching for a hotel in San Francisco around Christmas 2012.

Google Flights - This will be very interesting to watch evolve. I have a lot of respect for the ITA Software team and the innovation they’ve brought to the space, both in terms of the search backends but also from a design perspective. I actually prefer the UX of the old ITA Matrix vs the new Google Flights. There’s an unheralded designer at ITA responsible for creating some very clever designs including the “Time bars” view on their Matrix product which later became the much talked about Hipmunk UI. I find the way Google leads with maps for its flight search results a strange choice. The scatter plot of time vs price I suspect is too complicated for most users. I don’t doubt however that the team will continue to iterate the UX. The thing I do love is the speed. What will be interesting to watch is how and when they expand flight search beyond North American origins. ITA has always been a brilliant solution for searching from U.S. POS but from most Asia-Pacific markets they are missing nett fares, paper fares and web only fares as well as the all important LCC fares. This is true for a lot of Europe also.

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How Travel is Getting to Grips with New Mobile Technology and NFC in 2012

According to a recent Google whitepaper, the number of mobile users researching travel via their mobile devices is expected to grow 51% in 2012.

By Marco Saio, 8th Feb, 2012

The case is equally compelling for mobile booking in APAC, with more than 15% of travellers projected to book travel products and service by 2013.

And yet, an EyeforTravel survey of over 500 APAC  travel brands in late 2011 revealed that 57% admitted confusion over how to launch, track and achieve ‘mobile success’.

Deciding where to invest in mobile for maximum return is a major challenge right now for e-commerce and product development directors. It is a costly decision and there are numerous pitfalls to avoid, but early adopters are reaping the benefits.

With this in mind, we caught up with 2 Mobile Gurus who are leading the charge for mobile innovation in the travel industry.

Brett Henry is the VP of Marketing for Abacus International and Luis Martin-Domingo is the Chief Researcher of Airport Mobile Internet at Aeriport.com

Excerpts below:

1)  What do you see as being the most exciting development in mobile technology for the travel vertical this year?

LMD: This is difficult to say as mobile technology is morphing and bringing us interesting new services almost on a daily basis. However, one very simple feature which I’d highlight is the QR (Quick Response) Code.

Recently, with the rapid adoption of smart phones equipped with cameras, QR technology has exploded. One statistic that demonstrates this rapid increase in adoption is the number of people searching for the word “qr code” on Google:

Google Search of QR code

Source: www.google.com/insights

One of the peculiarities of mobile Internet is the fact that is able to connect the offline and online words with a simple tap or click.  The QR code is a perfect complement for the offline-online connection inherent to travelling.

BH:It would be in the development of the total trip experience for the traveller. The traveller should have the ability and accessibility to his/her scheduled meeting dates, restaurant, hotel, flight bookings and etc from a single mobile point.

2)  How do you see the concept of NFC technology evolving and what are the commercial implications of this?

BH: In Penn-Olson’s findings last year, 69% of Asian consumers are keen to use their mobile for payment. Much of this will rely on Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, which is available in most of the newer smartphones. We should see a shift from barcode swiping technology to the much more encompassing NFC utilization once the infrastructure is in place.

LMD: NFC tech has the potential to completely revolutionise every stage of a traveller’s journey, rendering it much quicker, simpler and more seamless.

In the future we’ll be able to take a train and tap the phone to pay for the train ticket to the airport. While on the train I’d be able to check-in the flight and store the boarding card on the phone. I’ll only have to tap the phone again when passing the airport security check before going to the business lounge, where I’ll not even have to take the phone from my jacket. I’ll also be able to do some cash/credit-card free shopping, eat at café and then board my flight with just my smartphone.

There are clear commercial implications of this technology as it will facilitate the processing of travellers along their trips, especially at airports. The technology company SITA predicts than more than 50% of passengers will use this technology by 2018.

Before NFC technology is commonly adopted, there are some technical standards that need to be addressed. However, international organizations like IATA (International Air Transport Association) are working on this and more and more services are expected to be available with this technology in the very near future.

3)  What would be your advice to travel companies planning and budgeting their mobile strategy in 2012?

LMD: Mobile adoption reminds me of the PC Internet adoption in the early 2000’s: Lack of know-how is forcing companies to outsource to external agencies. This process does not always create a parallel process of building internal expertise and long-term advantage.

Organizational ownership is also vital i.e. Which department will assume responsibility and investment? (e.g. Marketing, Sales, IT, Communication, etc.).

My advice is that companies should learn from past mistakes and experiences from the internet boom;

1. Consider the mobile channel as a new process
2. Define some targets for this new channel and keep adjusting them
3. Define who should ‘own’ mobile, and who do they report to?
4. Lead this process owner to coordinate with the rest of the organization to achieve the goals that should be tweaked on a regular basis.  

It seems obvious to create a solid organization around mobile (maybe a small, devoted team) and I think that may organizations take this approach. The question is how long it takes to take such decision. PC Internet previously and now Mobile Internet are very dynamic and changing environments and you need to invest resources to constantly experiment, define and develop. Experimentation and tracking are key.

BH: I almost always recommend starting with the post-booking experience, then progressing on to development of a mobile specific website, building mobile specific marketing skills, and finally looking at development of mobile apps.  Abacus has a whole suite of solutions to help agencies deliver high quality traveller experiences via mobile such as Abacus VirtuallyThere and Abacus Webstart.

4)  What is your favourite travel app?

LMD: In my research I am very much focussed on mobile solutions provided by global airports.  On a piece of research carried out during November 2011, I discovered that only 37% of airports around the world provided mobile services. Within the airport sector, I especially like the solution provided by Copenhagen airport, which has a virtual reality feature to find your way around the airport.

BH: The first would be Abacus VirtuallyThere. It is not an app, but a mobile specific Abacus VirtuallyThere website using HTML 5.  I travel frequently and just by checking my mobile, I get my latest itinerary, changes to flight schedule, eTickets, etc without having to open my laptop. The user interface is great, easy to view, easy to navigate, definitely something I will not leave home without!

The other is a simple currency conversion app – not sexy but one of my most used travel apps.

Both Brett and Luis will be presenting more insights during the Mobile in Travel conference as part of EyeforTravel’s 8th TDS Asia Summit this May 9-10th in Singapore.

You can see the full Mobile conference agenda and speaker line-up here:agenda.shtml#4

For more information and enquiries on TDS Asia 2012 please contact me at marco@eyefortravel.com

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Industry Leaders Predict Top Trends For 2012 - What’s Hot, What’s Not?

IN-DEPTH: The travel industry is growing globally but the geographical, socio-economic and technological balances are shifting. The Internet continues to be ascendant and disruptive in its ability to change the way the travel industry and its consumers operate.

By Marco Saio

2011 was marked by many dramatic challenges to tourism and the travel industry. But there is plenty to look forward to this year and Asia’s travel market is growing steadily despite facing tougher market conditions and a global economic slowdown.

“2012 looks to be another challenging year with the economic situations in Europe and America. Japan and Thailand are also still going to be recovering from their recent events: earthquake and flood respectively. However, if key markets like China and India continue bucking recessionary trends, we may see an increase in the demand for travel services,” says Robert Bailey, president and CEO of Abacus International, who is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Travel Distribution Summit Asia 2012, to be held in Singapore (May 9-10) this year.

While there have been upticks in areas such as business travel, the consumer space is in constant flux.

In addition to the geographic evaluation as part of their business strategy, travel businesses also need to focus on areas of innovation - social, local, and mobile.

It’s clear that technology will continue to shape the future of this industry in a big way. The fact that the Asia travel landscape still remains robust and dynamic, fuelled especially by the growth of mobile growth, exemplifies the same.

In order to discover more about the evolution of current trends, markets and emergent opportunities, EyeforTravel's Ritesh Gupta spoke to  4 travel industry luminaries to map out the most critical developments and challenges we face in 2012 and beyond. Excerpts:   

Robert Bailey, president and CEO of Abacus International (top travel trends in 2012):

1. The Growth in Mobile – an invaluable resource in 2012 – there are always things going on in the mobile space, with leading players like Kayak now getting the hang of right-sizing the right functions on the mobile platform. In 2012, what will be interesting is to see how these players can push the envelope even further. Instead of treating the mobile platform as a down-sized version of the web, to look at building travel applications that can only be used with today’s smartphones. These apps would be able to integrate great content with the traveller’s social graph as well as location-awareness.
2. Adoption and usage of HTML5 – even though it is part of the mobile platform, HTML5 has emerged as the preferred standard against native apps. While many apps have now been ported to multiple platforms, most of the ported apps are just copies of the original and do not take advantage of the native platform. In this case, companies may be better off building the app in HTML5 instead of going through the process of porting apps. Of course there will be applications do work better as apps, but travel is so dynamic and the user base so dispersed that it makes sense to focus on HTML5 as the standard.
3. Tablets – 2011 saw mobile devices become the primary focus of most applications. In 2012 however, we should see some applications beginning to target tablet users. With a larger screen and increased storage capabilities, the tablet has emerged as a serious contender to replace most of the functions of the desktop or laptop for most end users. Shared capabilities with smartphones such as GPS, touchscreen and rotational view also make it more intuitive as a travel research tool.
4. Aggregation – Travel remains a very fragmented space, but we are beginning to see more providers making their content and services available via web services. 2012 should see some interesting applications which aggregate content from a variety of sources instead of the usual approach of putting points on maps.
5. Social Networking Sites – Social Networking Sites (SNS) have been an area to watch for some time. However, due to the lack of a compelling model, this has yet to really take off. With the increase of smartphone usage, especially in Asia, companies, including travel players will continue to find the right way to utilise this phenomenon.   

Adrian Currie, Group Management Board Member, Priceline.com:

1. The global tourism industry will continue to grow as traveller numbers increase and suppliers expand product choice. However, it will continue to be impacted by numerous positive and challenging forces – examples being the wonderful promotion of New Zealand by the 2011 Rugby World Cup set against the devastating earthquakes seen in the city of Christchurch.
2. Chinese travellers will continue to become an increasingly important component of the travel industry mix (e.g. China is already Australia's largest source market in terms of economic value). Hospitality suppliers will need to continue to adapt their distribution, marketing and operational strategies to meet the needs of these consumers who are increasingly focused on more individual, high-quality experiences.
3. London will host a wonderful Olympic games (“the best ever”) albeit in the middle of an austere economic year for the UK and Continental Europe.

Ali Yilmaz, head of Travel, Google Southeast Asia (on online consumer trends and behaviours, and mobile):

1. Search will become personal. You will have a chance to see personal search results. This means, when you search for “hotels in Ho Chi Minh City”, you might see a colleague’s reviews about a hotel on a review site, a college friend’s pictures on a photo website, your brother’s video about the Cu Chi Tunnels on YouTube or a business page of a local Vietnamese Travel Agency on Google+. So search results will become more personal, more social and most importantly more relevant.
2. Air Travel will grow and become digital in Asia. There will be an inevitable growth of air travel in Asia. It will either be in the form of more aircraft being ordered, more budget airlines coming into the game, new destinations opening or more flight aggregators taking the stage. Regardless of any or all of these happening, they will have to become more digital. Airlines will have to adapt to the digital consumer faster than their counterparts in US and Europe otherwise they will fail.
3. Travel players in Asia will have to adapt to the digital consumer. Travel players have to realise the local trends in Asia. Asian traveller is becoming way more digitised faster than the rest of the world and mobile is taking the stage faster than the desktop in the region. The classical approach of “desktop first mobile second” approach will fail in Asia as the consumer leap-frogged the desktop. Travel industry players have to realise that Asia is skipping some of the Internet evolution steps and catching up with the rest of the world.

Edward Perry, Global Senior Director of Social Media, OTA Partnerships and Innovation Projects, Worldhotels (2012 predictions in terms of hotels and social media):

1. Social Media Evangelists will take a great role in the life of a hotel/hotel group.
   
   In the past, social media has been treated as almost an experimental part of hotel operations. I predict that in 2012, hotels/hotel groups will seek to integrate social outreach into all aspects of a hotels business: sales, front desk, housekeeping, customer service, operations, food & beverage, etc. Social networkers will play an instrumental role in assisting team members to understand the role they plan on the social graph.
2. Social Media Focus ROI will shift from ROI to ROE (Return On Engagement)As we all grappled in the past to measure return on investment of social media, our main focus was to find a financial return on investment. As we mature in our understating of social media outreach methods, we have learned that social media plays a far greater role than incremental room nights In 2012, we will see that social media is the glue to our success as hospitality providers. Social media professionals will mold the customer experience that has been initiated by traditional marketers and sales professionals. They will also bring the experience back on track when things do not happen as smoothly as anticipated through a collaboration of every member of the Team.
3. Every hotel will have a social media professional in 2012…period.

Gone are the days when hotels could take a backseat to social media. Equally passé are the conversations of how busy we all are to even think about social media. At this point in our reality, our customers expect us to be savvy in relating to them in a “social” manner. If our customers have a general expectation of us, we need to respond responsibly as an industry. In 2012, every hotel and every hotel group will need at least one social media professional to monitor the “buzz”. Our customers will no longer accept any excuses.

All 4 of these experts will be presenting more insights alongside 60 other industry heavyweights at the upcoming EyeforTravel TDS Asia 2012 summit in Singapore this May 9-10th.

For more information please contact the event organiser marco@eyefortravel.com

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Delivering as a passionate low cost travel loyalist

IN-DEPTH: AirAsia X has revolutionised air travel in many ways. The airline has the knack of understanding its customers’ pulse and continues to score when it comes to customer service delivery. EyeforTravel spoke to Azran Osman-Rani, CEO of AirAsia X about the airline’s business model and relevant issues.

By Ritesh Gupta

For a group that describes itself as a passionate low cost travel loyalist, AirAsia says it always listens to its guests’ needs for lower fares and fees.

Running an airline in today’s uncertain economic climate is a daunting task but AirAsia stands for its resilience.

AirAsia’s low-cost long-haul affiliate AirAsia X continued its growth trajectory in the fourth quarter of 2011, carrying 0.64 million passengers, an increase of 7.3 percent over the same quarter in 2010, with the same aircraft fleet.

In all, the total number of passengers carried last year touched 2.5 million (up 31.5 percent from 1.9 million passengers in 2010), and it also recorded its highest ever full year load factor of 80.1 percent (up 3.6 percentage-points from 2010).

AirAsia X was able to achieve positive load factor growth and average fare growth at the same time, on all of its routes that it has operated for at least a full year. With both load factor and average fares growing positively, the carrier was able to achieve a total Revenue of RM1.9 billion in 2011, a 45 percent growth over 2010.

This performance, according to Azran Osman-Rani, CEO of AirAsia X, demonstrates the resilience of the low-cost long-haul model, and underpins AirAsia X’s recently announced 2012 route network strategy to focus on building a stronger presence in its core markets.

The plan will see AirAsia X increase its flight frequencies on existing routes and look at expanding its network further across Asia Pacific.

In an interview with EyeforTravel.com’s Ritesh Gupta, Osman-Rani mentioned that the key to the success of AirAsia X lies in its business model:

• A strong globally recognised brand that has received wide acceptance.
• An unrivalled regional network across Southeast Asia with the highest frequencies and connectivity from our Kuala Lumpur hub.
• World’s lowest unit cost and at the same time offer affordable fares.
• Disciplined execution to deliver world class engineering reliability and on-time performance (88 percent in 2011) with new, spacious wide-body aircraft.
• Well-received customer service delivery, as evidenced by track record of winning Skytrax’s World’s Best Low Cost Airline for 3 consecutive years, and scores rated on Skytrax (www.airlinequality.com).

Adjustment

In January this year, the airline chose to re-align its network to focus on core markets. The airline decided to withdraw services to India (Mumbai and New Delhi) and Europe (Paris and London) from its Kuala Lumpur hub.

AirAsia X is to concentrate capacity in its core markets of Australasia, China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea.

These changes will improve operating cost efficiencies and consolidate its network to focus on markets where it can build a leadership position in 2012, stated the airline. Osman-Rani said the airline intends to concentrate capacity in its core markets where it has built up stable, profitable routes within an infrastructure that supports low cost services.

Commenting on how tough was it to ignore the demand and audience for its offering in these markets, Osman-Rani said the withdrawal of the services had nothing to do with ignoring demand.

“In fact, our decision was based on a careful assessment of the levels of supply and demand and the economic sustainability of these routes as a result of the levels of supply and demand. AirAsia X remains focused in maintaining its global leadership position in the low cost, long-haul segment. The airline will concentrate capacity in our core markets of Australia, China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Iran where we have built up stable, profitable routes. This move will see the airline opening up new routes within these markets as well as add frequencies on existing routes. We have since the withdrawal announcement, increased our flight frequencies to Tokyo and announced a new route to Sydney, Australia,” shared Osman-Rani, who is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Travel Distribution Summit Asia 2012, to be held in Singapore (May 9 -10) this year.

Assessing some of the critical external factors including soaring taxes and higher jet fuel prices, Osman-Rani mentioned that while some jurisdictions have opted to increase taxes and make it more difficult for passengers to travel (e.g., visa restrictions), there are other jurisdictions that are more supportive and want to see increased connectivity, air travel and tourism arrivals.

“We will prioritise markets that are pro-growth,” he said.

“As for jet fuel prices, we believe we have a sustainable competitive advantage with fuel consumption, burning less than 2.2 litres per seat per 100km vs. other airlines burning about 4 litres. So, irrespective of the price of fuel, overall fuel cost per passenger is still lower. For example, our overall fuel cost per ASK is still 1.9 US cents, which is less than half that of other airlines,” added Osman-Rani.

Innovation

AirAsia Group isn’t averse to charging its customers for new services, but it ensures that there is some novelty factor associated with its offering.

For instance, this year AirAsia X and its technology partner, Optiontown, introduced a new service, called ‘Empty Seat Option (ESo)’, available on Optiontown.com. AirAsia X says it is the first airline in Asia Pacific to offer its guests travelling in Economy, an option which provides a chance to get all three seats in a row for a nominal fee.

It seems the airline knows how to ensure that travellers pay for services that normally haven’t been charged for in the past.

“This is a revolutionary new service. In the past, customers could not book three seats in a row, for free or for a fee.The Empty Seat option is an added service to our ancillary product offerings which adds extra value to our service offerings. We offer them the option to purchase only what is required depending on individual needs rather than bundling the cost to our fare offerings. This way, guests are able to enjoy continuous low fares from the airline,” said Osman-Rani.

This is AirAsia X’s second ancillary offering introduced in partnership with Optiontown after the success of its Upgrade Travel Option (UTo) service, launched last year.

The UTo provides AirAsia X’s guests the opportunity to upgrade to AirAsia X’s Premium Flatbed seats. The UTo has helped to significantly increase AirAsia X’s premium class load factor (by over 22 percent) and upgrade yield (by over 60 percent), according to the airline. Options are limited by flight to ensure a reasonable probability of successful upgrades. Each option is dynamically priced.The 5 Golden Rules of Social Media ROI

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The 5 Golden Rules of Social Media ROI

By Marco Saio

Facebook page? Check! Twitter account and dedicated hastags? Check! Competitions, discounts and giveaways? Check! Any real, measurable and abundant ROI from social media campaigns? … erm, guys?

A recent EyeforTravel survey of APAC travel brands shows that despite 67% claiming to have deployed social media initiatives, more than half admitted confusion or inability to effectively rack and measure ROI.

One respondent eloquently describes the ROI dilemma faced by travel marketers; ‘For all its potential, social media keeps me up at night.. It feels a little bit like jumping in at the deep-end without arm-bands and being expected to swim like Michael Phelps ’

With this in mind, I took 3 social media experts to task on how travel brands can move beyond deploying social media for ‘engagement’ or to ‘raise awareness’ and instead concretely generate incremental revenue and real ROI. Excerpts below;

Josiah Mackenzie, Hotel Social Media and Review Analytics for Service and Sales

1) Identify where social media will save you money

Social technology can increase efficiency. Data shared by SimpliFlying at the EyeForTravel Social Media Strategies Amsterdam 2011 conference indicated its seven times cheaper to serve a customer on Twitter than in a call centre. Using social media and review analytics could also save you substantial amounts of money in customer surveys, business intelligence, and market research. Exposure from social campaigns could replace some of your investments in advertising and PR, saving money from budgets there as well. 

2) Count inbound leads from social media

Many hotels are using social media listening tools to pick up on conversations with people looking to buy what they are selling. Dan Sherman made a $70,000 sale off a Facebook referral. There are more sophisticated metrics related to sales - such as time to closing and average order size of a socially engaged customer - but begin with counting leads. Hubspot research showed companies that blog generate 88% more inbound leads than those who do not blog. What does this look like for your situation, and on other social networks? How is social activity affecting your lead volume?

3) Measure for sales conversion improvement

Social media - and online customer reviews in particular - play a key role in optimizing sales conversion rates. PhoCusWright found that OTA shoppers who visit hotel review pages in OTAs are twice as likely to convert. Jennifer Davies from Expedia had more specifics: “On Expedia.com, good reviews of 4.0 or 5.0 generate more than double the conversion of a review of 1.0 – 2.9." Brian Ferguson, EVP at Expedia, quantifying the ADR impact as well: “A 1 point increase in a review score equates to a 9% increase in average daily rate (ADR).” Measure the increase in revenue directly attributable from using social media in the sales process.

4) Track progress towards business KPIs and strategic objectives

Insights from the social web can play a key role in reaching strategic business goals such as improving guest satisfaction or increasing the percentage of direct bookings. When you understand the financial impact of reaching larger business goals such as these, quantifying the contribution of social media towards reaching that goal becomes easier.

(EyeforTravel and Greg Tilston published a good overview of social KPIs on the EyeForTravel blog.)
“The online reputation of each of our brands is a key success indicator for us. Online reviews not only give us insights into our daily operations, they also directly influence our revenue and profitability.” – Luis del Olmo, EVP and CMO of Melia Hotels International

5) Measure campaigns

Driving email newsletter subscriptions? Need to increase the number of inbound links to your website for SEO purposes? Want to increase visitor time on your website? Campaign or project-based ROI might ultimately be the best measure of return on investment. Especially if you compare the cost associated with reaching a goal with what it cost you in the past using other tactics. Martin Soler at WIHP wrote a good article if you want to learn more about this:  http://www.searchenginejournal.com/industry-discussion-the-true-nature-of-social-media-roi/39421/

Morris Sim, Co-Founder of Circos Brand Karma

1) Get your social business from Friends of Fans (FoFs).  There are a lot more of FoFs than fans, and your fans' referral will mean a lot more than if you try to target them directly.

2) Pay attention to user-generated content (UGC). Monitor what's being said with text, photos, and videos.  Know how your brand is being perceived in real-time as well as evergreen UGC.

3) Engage interactively.  Content from meaningful conversation is king, and no one likes to be constantly reminded of offers and discounts.  Imagine if you're conversing with your date and in every other sentence s/he tries to convince you to move in and help with rent.  A big turn-off!

4) Have a plan for dealing with emergencies. These days, crisis could occur at any point even if you do everything perfectly.  So it's time to update the emergency response plan and take into account the many-to-many nature of social media.  Once the staff trained, make sure you do regular practice runs!

5) Develop a relationship with Gen Y/Zs.  They are highly influential.  More than half of the world is under 30 and they are the new movers and shakers.  Everywhere from Cairo to Wall Street they're banding together to make their voices heard, and in some cases, overthrowing institutions.  Get to know them.  They're your future customers and staff.

Barbara Pezzi, Director Analytics & Search Optimization at Fairmont Raffles Hotels International

1. Start with a goal in mind before you embark in any activity. If you do not know what it is that you are trying to achieve, it becomes very hard to measure how successful you have been. The same applies to ROI. If your social media strategy does not have ROI in mind, it is very unlikely it is going to produce any. Ultimately, not all social media activities will have an ROI or a financial outcome. However, it is important that all stakeholders agree if a financial gain is expected and if so, a relevant strategy put in place.
2. Without accurate benchmarking it is very difficult to establish correct ROI. Take records of your key metrics before, during and after your social media campaign so that you can correctly establish the impact of your activities. Keep a written schedule of all your activities on the various social sites for correlations and further analysis. It make historical analysis much easier.
3. Philosophical debate aside on whether social media should have an ROI or not, if you are required to report on it, stick to its financial definition and financial metrics. Makes sure you take into account savings in your profit calculation but do not create or use intangible “made up” metrics like the ROI of a Facebook like or a twitter follower. It is a simple case of costs vs profits. If the investment is in $, then so must be the outcome, not followers, likes or clicks.
4. Have a measurement strategy in place. It is almost next to impossible to accurately measure any activity if no tracking has been put in place in advance. Ensure you social posts and links are tracked with campaign parameters, as you would do with your PPC campaign, familiarise yourself with the analytics tools provided by each social platform when available (ex: Facebook Insights), establish your Key Performance Indicators. You are not measuring the activity, like how many followers did you gain this week or how many times you posted, but the outcome.
5. Accurate measurement takes time and discipline. Start by utilising tools freely available such as Google Analytics, before you start investing in a proprietary tool. Set actual numeric targets against your goals, measure accordingly and act based on targets and results. Measurement is not the goal. The goal is to derive actionable insights. If you do not have a solid analytics strategy in place, and the human resources to manage it, even the most expensive sophisticated tool will be next to useless.

Barbara, Morris and Josiah will be presenting more social media insights at the upcoming EyeforTravel TDS Asia 2012 in Singapore this May 9-10th. For more information please visit the official website or contact the summit director marco@eyefortravel.com

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