Everyday that goes by, I read yet another article or blog post about new milestones reached by this or that social media. And if you pay close attention, many of them involve the travel and hospitality vertical.

1. Frédéric Gonzalo

2. Everyday that goes by, I read
yet another article or blog
post about new milestones
reached by this or that social
media.
And if you pay close attention,
many of them involve the
travel and hospitality vertical.
For example:

3. now has close to one billion
active users on mobile, which
represents 84% of its total user
base of 1.23 billion. And what’s
the most shared topic?
Travel.

4. Did you notice some of
the changes in the past
year, such as the new
“traveling to” feature,
the star-rated system for
hotels and restaurants, or
even Graph Search that
helps users “find people,
places and things”?

6. is rumored to launch a new travel
product shortly, called “Choose
your own adventure”, aiming for
a bigger play in the travel space.

7. Already, its most recent
feature launched at the end of
2013 were “Place Pins”,
seeking to get more location-based
information and
itineraries on various boards.

8. Here again, it seems travel
is the most popular topic
shared through pictures and
pins. Read: Pinterest and
Travel: A Match Made in
Social Media Heaven.

9. has seen its usage
increase
exponentially in the
past year. Some 100
million comments
were written
between 2000 and
2012, then 50
million were
written… in 2013
alone!

10. TripAdvisor is now a travel
meta-search engine,
making it a one-stop shop
for many in their travel
decision-making process.

11. which now has over 200
million active users, has
become a de facto tool
for most travel
destinations creating
hashtags to curate best
photos from locals and
tourists alike. For more
on this, read 4 Creative
Uses of Instagram in
Destination Marketing.

12. is turning itself into a full-fledged
publishing platform,
having now reached the 300
million users milestone.
Brand pages no longer have
“products and services”
tabs, but rather “Showcase”
pages where content shared
is the name of the game.

13. Okay, so how do brands manage their
presence across these and many other
online platforms in order to
communicate, engage in
conversations and draw the attention
of potential travelers?
Will we reach a point when too much
content will kill the content?

14. Back in January, Mark W. Schaefer
wrote a seminal post on his blog,
titled Content Shock: Why content
marketing is not a sustainable
strategy. His theory spawned close to
600 comments on his blog and more
than 100 blog post rebuttals, videos
and numerous arguments and counter-arguments.

15. Why the fuss?
Schaefer contends that it
becomes increasingly difficult,
and expensive, to reach the
same amount of people due to
more and more companies and
individuals joining the content
marketing marching band.

16. Source: Mark W. Schaefer

17. In fact, Schaefer contends we will
reach a point where the economics
won’t match up and we’ll see three
phenomenons occur:
Deep pockets will win
The barriers to entry will become
increasingly high
The cost-benefit funnel will flip

18. Whether you agree with his
theory or not is besides the point
of this article. In fact, Schaefer
himself responded to the most
salient arguments against his
theory in the following post on his
blog! You can read it here

19. Personally, I tend to agree that
content marketing will eventually
reach a point where differentiation
will become increasingly difficult. But
this will happen if and when a
majority of players indeed embrace
the potential to engage
conversations, thinking and acting as
publishers on various owned, paid and
earned media.

20. And to tell you truth, I am not
seeing a massive movement
towards content marketing in
travel. Yet.

21. In the travel and hospitality
realm, content is abundant and
storytelling has been at the heart
of our industry since the nick of
times. After all, we sell
experiences and memories, rather
than strictly-speaking products
and services.

22. Most travel brands who effectively
manage accounts on the web, social
media or a corporate blog tend to
showcase pictures and videos, which
makes sense.

23. But since Facebook users upload
more than 350 million photos daily,
one can understand how newsfeeds
are becoming cluttered with too
much content, which explains why
Facebook has been filtering more
and more what content reaches
your newsfeed.

24. Some pages are seeing only 1-
2% organic reach, forcing
brands to spend in order to
reach audiences previously
available with a dynamic
community management
approach.

25. Source: EdgeRank Checker

26. So back to the question: will there
be content shock in travel?
I do believe it’s inevitable that we
will reach a point where
differentiation will become much
harder, based on a content
strategy alone.
To this day, I see very few brands
optimal with principles of How To
Apply Content Marketing in
Hospitality.

27. But what if a majority of travel
brands indeed take the plunge
and invest in content marketing,
both offline and online?
Will it become a matter of deeper
pockets and impossible barriers to
entry? Not necessarily.

28. Early adopters will move on
and make a better use of
owned, paid and shared media
mix through what Altimeter
called “converged media”.

29. Source: Altimeter Group

30. A final argument could be
made for those who were late
to the ‘content marketing’
game in that they will most
likely be late as well when
newer trends unfold…

31. In essence, we should expect
some kind of content shock to
occur in the travel vertical,
since it’s already happening
for example on Facebook.

32. Content marketing nevertheless
remains a key strategy for brands
to tell their story, through
different platforms, different
devices and different media.
This is no easy task, but then
again who said travel marketing
was a walk in the park, right?

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