The World’s second biggest travel trade show, World Travel Market just ended in London, bringing over 48,000 tourism industry key players from across the globe. Every year, as part of their educational tracks and seminars, WTM publishes its annual Industry Report surveying more than a thousand senior holidaymakers on various topics ranging from upcoming trends to airlines, emerging markets or travel resources utilization.

1. What content travellers
seek online
On The Effectiveness Of Travel Blogs…
Frédéric Gonzalo

2. The World’s second biggest travel trade show, World Travel
Market just ended in London, bringing over 48,000 tourism
industry key players from across the globe.
Every year, as part of their educational tracks and seminars,
WTM publishes its annual Industry Report (click here to
access it) surveying more than a thousand senior
holidaymakers on various topics ranging from upcoming
trends to airlines, emerging markets or travel resources
utilization.

3. How UK
Holidaymakers
Use Travel
Resources
(WTM 2013
Industry Report)

4. The fact that 27% of UK holidaymakers trust peer
reviews over personal recommendations is not
surprising by itself, even though many admit loathing
the use of TripAdvisor, Yelp and other similar networks.
What is actually surprising is the dismal result of other,
more known travel resources like specialized magazines
(5%) and the traditional newspaper travel section (5%).

5. Some will find it refreshing to find out
that printed guidebooks still come
out strong, with 14%, the same score
as travel board websites – otherwise
known as destination sites, or DMO.
What were the resources least
used for planning and going on
holidays?

6. Social media and travel blogs, scoring
only 3% each on this survey! That was
enough for Skift to publish a
controversial piece titled Travel Blogs Not
Finding Use Among Travelers. Ahem! I
beg to differ, and here are the two major
reasons why.

7. HOLIDAYMAKERS VS TRAVELERS
The first bias here, and it’s an important one, is that
the 1,277 folks surveyed for this Industry Report were
holidaymakers who took at least a one-week
international vacation outside of the UK in the past
year.
Well, no offense, but holidaymakers are usually folks
savvy about the travel industry, and they know the
tricks of the trade.

8. Comparing their behavior with that of everyday
travelers is misleading. I have written many articles in
the past on the lasting and growing trend of social
media, mobile and user-generated content platforms
as key decision-making influencers for the digital
traveler.
And most, if not all, recent studies point to growing
utilization of web-based tools, from travel apps to
social media and, yes, travel blogs.

9. I would venture further to say that holidaymakers
surveyed in this report are lagging behind trends
being observed in various other studies. For example,
it says that 43% of holidaymakers use social media
while on vacations.
However another survey, authored by TEXT100 and
published a year ago, showed how digital influence
travel decisions across the globe. Percentages were
much higher, including with European travelers.

10. It should also be said that there is a well-known
low adoption of mobile and social trends in the
UK, largely attributed to high charges
associated with texting and calling and data
roaming.
A recent survey by TripAdvisor with over 20,000
UK travelers unveiled different findings about
UK travelers:

11.  15% of UK travellers use social media to research and plan
trips
 25% using it to get recommendations while on the go
 39% UK travellers accessed social media networks while
away, compared to around 91% in Indonesia, 87% in
Malaysia and 86% in Thailand
 The most popular reason for UK travellers to use social
media (in their travel planning) is to access rich media like
video and photo of places they plan to visit
Source: Tnooz

12. So the reality described in the Skift
article and in the WTM report
relates to UK holidaymakers, not UK
travelers in general. Nor does it
apply to travelers in general, on a
global scale.

13. HOW DO WE DEFINE “USE”?
Before ditching social media and
travel blogs altogether, let’s also
revisit the question here, which
was to assess travel resources
used for planning and going on
holiday.

14. There are five stages to the travel
decision process, according to
Google:
1. dreaming,
2. planning,
3. booking,
4. experiencing, and
5. sharing.

15. It’s been demonstrated that social
media, for example, is not a key driver
at the planning or booking stages, but
plays a huge role at the experiencing
and sharing stages. Doing so, it often
impacts the dreaming stage for folks in
your network.

16. An example…
you share a picture of yourself at a fabulous
beach resort, dragging your feet on a
pristine, sandy beach… making some friends
jealous, or at least commenting and thinking
of their next trip!

17. Travel blogs play a similar role, mostly at the beginning
and the end of a travel cycle, or in the dreaming and
sharing stages.
The same could even be said about newspaper travel
sections or specialized magazine: there serve a great
purpose in sparking interest for a destination, things to
do there, ways to discover and meet locals, and so on.

18. Just because they are not used by UK
holidaymakers during the planning
and going stages doesn’t mean they
are not meaningful to travelers in
general.

19. SO THEN,
WHAT USE FOR TRAVEL BLOGS?
There are as many travel blogs out there as they are types of
travelers, so a first thing required here is to kill the
misconception of the solo traveler holding an online diary,
seeking visibility in exchange for freebees.
Yes, there are such travel blogs out there, but these are not the
ones targeted nor referred to by industry experts and
destination marketers.

20. The following video
shows a great case study
of how Meet South
Africa got influential
bloggers to create a buzz
over its destination, in
the same fashion that
traditional PR would get
TV exposure or media
coverage.

21. Yet travel blogs can also play an important role as part
of a content marketing approach online.
Tourisme Montreal, for example, has been using its
blog as cornerstone to its online content strategy,
which can then be amplified through its various social
media networks, i.e. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,
Pinterest.

22. Another great example is how
Tourism Richmond used a novel
approach to highlight how many great
restaurants it had on its territory,
through a blogger competition that
generated over 1,500 applicants and
one paid blogger covering a different
restaurant everyday of the year.
Thus, the 365 Days of Dining concept
was born and, to this day, remains a
great online resource for anybody
planning to eat around the Richmond
area, in British Columbia, Canada.

23. So for travel marketers, in particular
at the destination level, travel blogs
play an important role in crafting the
attractiveness of the place, its people
and the stories that shape its daily
life, no matter what time of year.

24. The important thing is to know what
role this content is intended to play
in the overall online destination
marketing strategy, in order to find a
good fit for all parties involved: the
travel blogger, the destination… and
the traveler. Or holidaymaker.

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