Social Media Applications' Impact on Travel Management
1. Thank you for joining the webinar. We will begin shortly.
Social Media Applications'
Impact on Travel Management:
The Benefits, the Risks and
How to be a Success
amidst the Constant Change
This session will cover both the travel management tools that exist in the social media
realm as well as broader social media tools that have brought the travelers voice and the
up-to-the-minute pulse of travel into the limelight. We will address the impact and benefits of
the traveler to traveler side conversations being broadcast, the role of the community
manager to engage travelers and cover what smart travel managers are doing to stay
ahead of the issues.
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4. Agenda
• Benefits/ Risks of Using Social Media
• Best Practices
• Where Does Social Media Fit Into Travel
• Key Changes Within Social Media
• Corporate Social Media – Benefits/ Obstacles
• Public and Corporate Social Media Tools
• Developing In-House Apps
• Monitoring
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5. Your Presenters
Kate Koziol, President of Bryan Alaspa,Social Media
K Squared Communications Lead, K Squared
Communications
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6. Objectives
1. List three or more examples of successful travel-related
social media.
2. Identify the benefits and liabilities of the top tools.
3. Implement successful listening, engagement and
monitoring tactics.
4. Be prepared to poll their traveler populations.
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7. Poll Questions
What social media tools, if any, are you using to communicate with your travelers?
A: Yammer
B: Jive
C: Chatter
D: LinkedIn
E: Custom App
F: None
What percentage of your travelers use your corporate social media tools to get travel
information?
A: Less than 25%
B: Between 25% and 50%
C: Between 50% and 75%
D: Over 75%
E: Does not apply
How often do you think your travelers are using public social media to obtain travel-related
information?
A: Always
B: Most of the time
C: About half the time
D: Once in a while
E: never
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8. From Our Research:
Social Media Used to Communicate to
Travelers
Yammer, 8.3 Jive, 0
Chatter, 8.3
LinkedIn, 16.7
None, 66.7
Custom
App, 16.7
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9. From Our Research:
Travelers Using Public Social Media Tools to
Get Travel-Related Information
Never, 8.3 Most of the
Time, 8.3
Once in a
While, 33.3
About Half the
Time, 50
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10. Benefits of Using Social Media
• Creating conversation around travel instead of top down
management
- Gather input from travelers
- Gain buy in on program rules
• Transition from a push
communication model to a pull model
• News can be instant
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11. More Benefits of Using Social Media
• You decide what is news
• Segmented social media - App can house news for a specific
audience
- Just to employees
- Just to accounting
- Just to travelers
• Corporate Social Media Tool – Closed Group without Public
Conversation
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12. Poll
What is the greatest benefit of your corporate social
media efforts?
A: Crowdsourcing Travel Program Improvements
B: Delivering Valuable Travel Information
C: Creating a Community of Travelers
D: Communicating Travel Policy
E: Other
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13. From Our Research
What is the greatest benefit of your
corporate social media efforts?
Crowdsourcing Travel
Program
Improvements
Delivering Valuable
Travel Information
Creating a Community
of Travelers
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14. Risks In Using Social Media
• Accountability for addressing issues
• Controlling the info
• News can be instant
• Publicizing where big sale or merger might be taking place
• Where is information asset being stored and can it be
hacked?
- IT Asset Management Professional ITAMS
• Non-tech audience or highly private individuals
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15. More Risks In Using Social Media
• BYOD issues - Not cross platform functional – how platform
impacts function
- iPad display of spreadsheets vs. Android
• Where are my users – do we use one carrier – that can
impact display
- ATT vs. Verizon – user experiences differ
• Social media tools vary globally
• Creating social media app can vary widely in price and
complexity
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16. Poll Questions
Does public social media-obtained information conflict with
your travel program information?
A: A significant amount
B: A moderate amount
C: A little
D: Not at all
Does public social media-obtained information cause extra
work, loss of productivity or extra expense?
A: Extra work
B: Loss of productivity
C: Extra expense
D: No impact
E: Other
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17. From Our Research:
Does Public Social Media Conflict with Travel
Program Information?
Moderately,
16.7
Not at
all, 33.3
A little, 50
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18. From Our Research
Does Public Social Media-Obtained
Information Cause Extra Work, Loss
of Productivity or Extra Expense?
Extra Work
No Impact 38%
31%
Extra Loss of
Expense Production
8% 23%
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19. What to Consider Before Implementing
• Who is your audience?
• What do they need to know?
• Why do they need to know it?
• What is the user going to be doing with the information?
• What form is best suited for message?
- YouTube Video
- PowerPoint
- Blog
- Tweet/Post
- Website
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20. And a Few Other Things to Consider
• What are you going to be saying?
• Where are they going to be when they are using it?
• Legalities and policing of site
• Is this platform going to stick around and what is exit
strategy if it turns into MySpace?
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21. Best Practice: Cross Promotion of Apps
• Biz card handouts
• On screen
• Handouts
• Push to large number of employees
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22. Best Practice Examples: Social Media in
Meetings
• Meetings of more than 100
- Polling
- Twittering
• Short term use
• For every sales meeting – 3rd year doing it – better
every year
• No passwords, ease of use
• Get big numbers of people to participate
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23. Best Practices
• Tailor design to audience
• Involve key stakeholders
- Working across multiple
platforms can and will
be challenging
- Multiple platforms will
dramatically impact design
- Legal, IT, global
security, communications involvement
• Make people part of the process
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24. More Best Practices
• Promote the tool so people can find it
- It is not social if nobody uses it
• Social Media Policy
- Internal and external tools
- Activity does get read at executive level
- External gets back to company
- Cultural differences can impact what is
considered appropriate
• Ease of use
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25. Thought of the Day
“Travel is
hard
enough, don’t
make it harder.”
Pat Sage,
Director, Corporate Travel
Huron Consulting
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26. Some Other Things to Consider
• Makes sense and good layout
• Zero experience to very experienced user – must reach
both extremes
• Be relevant and fun
• Be open to suggestions –
feedback can be useful
• Watch and respond to all
comments, especially passionate
comments - craft a
customer service-focused
response
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27. …And Finally
• Listen – If your labor negotiators have been to every town
almost and have good suggestions on where to stay eat, etc.
• Resolve complaint publically
• Navigate language translation issues
• Crowd-source new ideas
• Drive the WHY am I doing this.
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28. Poll
In your estimation, what percentage of your travelers
use public social media to obtain travel-related
information?
A: Less than 25%
B: Between 25% and 50%
C: Between 50% and 75%
D: More than 75%
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29. From Our Research
How Many of Your Travelers Use Public
Social Media to Obtain Travel-Related
Information?
Between 50
and 75
Percent
8%
Between 25 Less than
and 50 25 Percent
Percent 50%
42%
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30. Where Does Social Media Fit Into Travel?
• Travel program communications
• Meetings and Events
- Apps used to put data online, centralize and searchable
- Use app to connect to attendees
- Have attendees connect to each other
- To find seminar rooms
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31. Key Changes Within Social Media
• Video increasing
- Key information source
• Mobile increasing
- When social media hit the
scene in 2008, mobile was
not big, but it started to
take off in 2010
- Mobile has file size
limitation and not the
only answer
- May disappoint C- Suite with high expectations
• Social /Local/ Mobile synergy
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32. More Key Changes Within Social Media
• Free, Easy and Fast
- Job app video – old school 2 mos. New school – 1 week
• News is Self Published
- American Red Cross can tweet live detail to millions without
waiting for news show to run the story. Can drive donation
spikes when needed
• Pull – put something on a site and let them pull – passport, ff
program
• Push – Yammer – gets delivered
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33. Best Practice Example: Deltek Kona Rollout
• Launching Kona
- Hosted Travel Day with all key suppliers
- Hosted quiz – top 10 ways to save in travel
Easy questions – had to go to site to get answers
- If they posted something to the blog they were entered to
win a supplier- provided prize
- Grand Opening –
Got into the habit of posting
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34. Best Practice Example: Deltek Kona Rollout
• Launching Kona
- Did simultaneous post and email
Used email to provide more detail
- No training required to use Kona
- 90% online adoption
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35. Advice for Success
“Make it easy to do
the right thing and
difficult to do the
wrong thing.”
Karoline Mayr,
Director,
Globlal Travel Procurement
Deltek
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36. Supporting Communication Tools
Use Your Communications Team to Find out What Works Best
• Use your Communications Team to Find out What Works Best
• Intranet
- Can be complex to retrieve information
- Might lack resources to fix issues
- Can be policy and links to vendors
• Emails
- Only certain level of detail and frequency
- Blasts and direct emails
Vendor specials
Some companies require CEO approval for blasts
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37. More Communication Tools
• Texting
- Laws against unsolicited texting
• Blog
- Some travel managers are creating draw
to their programs via valuable tips in
the blog
• Phone calls
• Snail mail
• Scrolling messages on booking tool
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38. Poll
How do you communicate with your travelers?
A: Email
B: Intranet
C: Text
D: Phone
E: Booking Tool
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39. From Our Research
How Do You Communicate With Your Travelers?
Booking Tool
26% Email
35%
Phone
13%
Text Intranet
3% 23%
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40. Polling the Travel Population
• Use existing tools
• Work with marketing
communications and
corporate communications
• Research what already works
• Be prepared to test new tactics
• Publically respond to feedback
to improve offering
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41. Corporate Social Media Benefits
• Collaboration across departments and across long distances
- Mobile
- Laptops, PCs, Mac
• Total control of the information and who uses it
• No games, just for business
• Allow remote working and teamwork
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42. More Corporate Social Media Benefits
• Access information from employees worldwide
• Full customization
• Easy adoption
• Assists employees and management communication
• Create better workflow within employee groups/teams
• Improve customer service
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43. Corporate Social Media Obstacles
• Getting employees to use it
• Getting past the sense that it is a “toy” and a time waster
rather than valuable tool
• Keeping information accurate and consistent.
• Conveying the usefulness to upper management
• Demonstrating actual ROI can be difficult
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47. Yammer – Best Practices
Victoria Gutowski – USG Corporation
Valuable News and Tips
• New scam on hotel front desk calling to get cc#
• Pre-check and why it is a good idea to sign up for it
• TSA regs
• Vendor Specials
• Aviation – hazardous materials in luggage
• Flying over the holidays
• 15 laptops left at O’Hare
• Keep watches in shoes when passing through security
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51. Jive – Best Practices
• Sapient women’s leadership network
• Male dominated company
• Participation by men and women.
• Chapters in each office and by country.
• Also have bookworms groups talking about books
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54. Other Tools to Consider
• MS SharePoint
- Can be complex depending on the organization
- Can be organized to be very practice specific
- Can be used in conjunction with Yammer
• Deltek Kona
- Central repository of data
- Can include all stakeholders
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55. Other Tools to Consider
• Telligent
- Very dynamic, but more complicated
- Interface is much more involved, not as intuitive
• Newsgator
- Used in conjunction with Microsoft Sharepoint
- Makes the presentations there a bit more social
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56. Industry Specific Tools
• TravelPort Opinions
- Open to travel agents, tour operators and travel
consolidators
- An open forum to exchange information and participate in
groups
- Network with other travel professionals
- Access unbiased reviews of hotels
• TravelPort Also Uses
- YouTube Channel
- International SOS
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57. Public Social Media Tools
• Gohow
- Gohow airport first launched –
shows gates and ff clubs etc.
- Geolearning of your airport
• Tripit
• Tripit PRO
- Data can shared
- Does not work well on Blackberry
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58. More Public Social Media Tools
• Tripcase
- Use it as an added layer
- Land it in city – get Avis car – gets note not to buy
insurance
- Get office address
- Certain hotels get messaging
- Can change message quarterly
• Yelp
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59. More Public Social Media Tools
• Weather
• Hotel Tonight
• Restaurant finders
• Maps
• TripAdvisor
• Twitter – follow airlines/hotels etc. for deals
• Travisa – visa expediter
• Foursquare
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60. More Public Social Media Tools
• Instagram
- For photo sharing
- Growing very fast
- Can be used in conjunction with Twitter, Facebook and More
• LinkedIn
- Can create company pages
- Great for B2B networking
- Business oriented
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61. More Public Social Media Tools
• BT Social App
- Business Traveler app rolling out this month
- Maximize downtime and meet other travelers – meet up
- Create own social events around travels
- Can fill in future date
- Find people from your company in the area
- Walled garden – share details with everyone or select group
– privacy levels can be set
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62. Developing an App In-House
• Who have you worked with?
• How does the cache out work
- all of it or just text with images
• What are the design options
• Functionality
• How do updates happen –
foreground vs. background
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63. Developing an App In-House
• Does it update 1 page or whole app?
- If it was updating in background I might see wrong data first
at top of page
• What is your support function like?
• Who handles updates – user or design company?
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64. Monitoring
• Keep your ear to the ground
- Radian6
- Lithium
- Social Mention
- Google Alerts
- Google Analytics
- Hootstuite
• Get Someone to Monitor!
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65. Summary
•Examples of successful corporate social media
•Top benefits and liabilities
•Successful monitoring tactics
•Polling travelers
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