The Top Social Media Trends for Travel and Tourism: PhoCusWright Bloggers Summit at ITB Berlin

Last week, I attended the PhoCusWright Blogger’s Summit Workshop held at the ITB conference in Berlin, Germany.

The workshop was entitled “The Top Social Media Trends for Travel & Tourism” and featured a panel of 5 major bloggers. Each member of the panel was asked to provide his 3-5 top Social Media Trends for 2009:

Darren Cronian

Mobile
Twitter: companies are going to have to become more social and interact with the consumer
Travel companies will start using more social media

Klaus Hidebrandt

Social Media 2.0 is all about communication with the consumer. Companies need to know, understand, and execute social media at a top level.
Get your CEO or top executive involved. Employees love it. Customers love it. There is no more powerful way to humanize your brand.
The future lies in companies that adopt EVERYTHING: one brand and one media is best.

Kevin May

Twitter: 974% of traffic in UK in 2008
PR: people are thinking more cleverly in terms of PR. They are using different forms of media both online and offline for campaigns.
Crowd-sourcing: making sure you know what is happening in a network digitally.
Hyperlocal: creating niche services for a localized community

Martin Schobert

Feedback 2.0: a lot of comments, learning how to communicate with a social internet
Maps will be the new interface.
More CONTEXT: the right content offered to the right person at the right time
Do your homework. Define goals clearly with social web and have B2B conversations

Vasco Sommer-Nunes

Volume of mentions will become part of a greater measurement metrix, such as “share of voice”, to determine success in social media.
Personal publishing on the web will continue to increase, thereby increasing the share of user generated content.
Companies will react and hire a social media guy to listen, help and educate users
Cross publishing will become stronger, i.e. publishing into several communities from one web site or mobile phone.
The travel industry will embrace social media even more than other industries, because people love to talk about their vacation and show others where they´ve been!

After the panelists presented their trends, the audience was asked to interactively text in their picks to have a final list of 3. Although the majority of the panel’s trends focused on social media sites, especially Twitter, the audience’s choices end up being strategies.

Audiences Choices of Top 3 Social Media Trends with the greatest impact in the next year: