The Impact of Social Media on Online Travel Search

Master’s thesis of Alexandros Papageorgiou

Turku, 2010

3 basic components of the project

Social Media

Web Search

eTourism

Why these 3 areas? Social media & search

engines are the most visited destinations on the web

Both have a strong influence on travel decision making

Travel industry is a typical early adopter of new web technologies

What is Social Media ?

“Social media are works of user-generated content like video, audio, text or multimedia that are published and shared in a social environment, such as a blog, wiki or video sharing site.” (The Social Media Guide)

Examples:

General purpose Travel-specific

Examples of social media use in Tourism Marketing

Connecting the dots...

Travel + Search + Social Media

In search of a Finnish hotel ...

omena hotel

Multiple social media results returned

Key Observations

Key observations

The majority of travelers nowadays make use of the Internet to conveniently access travel information

Key observations

Typically, the gateway to travel information for most travelers is a web search engine

Key observations

Social media web sites tend to appear increasingly with high rankings in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs)

Key observations

Social media sites enjoy high credibility from consumers

So, exactly how high (or not) is the impact of social

media on travel information search ?

Main research questions

1.

Which is the proportion of social media results upon a travel search ?

2.

Which are the most dominant types of travel social media?

3.

Which are the top social media sites represented in the search results?

4.

How does the social media content on search results vary across the first three pages?

Research Design

Focus industry: Hospitality. Why ?

• The first search type typically made by travelers

• Usually the highest trip expenditure

• Ubiquity of hotels

• High brand sensitivity

Type of queries: {Hotel name + Destination}

Examples:

Hilton Athens

Radisson Helsinki

Best Western Rhodes

Research Design

6150 URLs were retrieved and reviewed from SERPs, involving over 100 hotel brands

Data collection

36 students from the E-commerce class of Åbo Akademi took part in the project by collecting and analyzing data

Geo: 12 cities in Finland & Greece

Landing pages reviewed in 3 languages

4 commercial search engines deployed

Research Results

Social media have a very significant presence in the SERPs

28%

72%

Social Media

Non-Social Media

Consumer review and virtual community sites, the most dominant

57.1%

21.3%

15.9%3.6% 1.7% 0.4%

Consumer Review Sites

Virtual community Sites

Blogs

OtherMedia Sharing Social Networks

Tripadvisor and Real Travel, the top social media sites in the sample

Social media site Frequency Frequency % Cumulative %

Tripadvisor 286 28.7% 28.7%

Real travel 94 9.4% 38.2%

Wikio 73 7.3% 45.5%

Virtual Tourist 61 6.1% 51.6%

TravBuddy 59 5.9% 57.5%

Travel Yahoo 49 4.9% 62.4%

TravelPod 40 4.0% 66.5%

Lonely Planet 30 3.0% 69.5%

Ciao 14 1.4% 70.9%

Hotel Chatter 12 1.2% 72.1%

Head-torso-long tail distribution of SM sites: 7% of the unique SM domains represent 70% of the sample’s total SM results

1 8 15 22 29 36 43 50 57 64 71 78 85 92 99 1061131201271341411481551620.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

70.0%

80.0%

90.0%

100.0%

Cumulative % of SM representation

Cumulative % of unique domains

Cumulative number of unique domains

Tampere and Turku hotels the most social media friendly

Turku

FI

Tampere

FI

Rhodes GR

Patras

GR

Vantaa

FI

Piraeu

s GR

Thess

aloniki

GR

Laris

sa GR

Athens G

R

Espoo FI

Helsinki

FI

Herakli

on GRAVG

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

0.0%

5.0%

10.0%

15.0%

20.0%

25.0%

30.0%

35.0%

40.0%

45.0%

50.0%

SM frequency Non-SM Frequency SM/non-SM ratio

Locations

SM o

bser

vatio

ns

SM distribution is homogenous across the first three search pages

1 2 30%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

0.0%

5.0%

10.0%

15.0%

20.0%

25.0%

30.0%

27.1% 27.9% 28.0%

non-SM frequency

SM fre-quencySM/non-SM ratio

Search page

Top social media-friendly hotels

Hotel name City Country SM results

Omena Tampere Finland 27

Hotelli Kauppi Tampere Finland 19

Park Hotel Turku Finland 17

Scandic Julia Turku Finland 17

Best Western Plaza Rhodes Greece 16

Cosmopolitan Rhodes Greece 15

Faliraki SA Rhodes Greece 15

Hotelli Korpilampi Espoo Finland 15

Best Western Hotel Turku Finland 14

Sokos Turku Finland 14

Conclusions

Conclusions

Social media constitute a very significant portion of the search results and they are ubiquitous across all search pages (1-3) analyzed and all the destinations involved

Conclusions

A handful of sites, led by Tripadvisor, are responsible for the majority of social media presence in the SERPs

Conclusions

A striking absence was observed for the mainstream social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (this could signal a missed opportunity for travel marketers)

Conclusions

Medium-sized destinations prove to be the most social media friendly, leaving behind popular tourist hubs

Marketing Recommendations Travel companies can harness the power of social media by optimizing their mix of owned, bought and earned media

More details are available in section 8.4 of the thesis (p. 91-99)

The full text can be downloaded here:

http://bit.ly/cFVBNc

That’s it...

Aknowledgements

For her continuous guidance and feedback, my supervisor, prof. Pirkko Walden

For their precious ideas and comments:

Zheng Xiang (N. Texas University), Jussi-Pekka Erkkola (Nokia), Kim Holmberg (Åbo Akademi), Colette Gattoni (Åbo Akademi)

...and of course all the e-commerce students who took part in the project

Abayomi AyoolaElisa BourdonnayKlaus von Wendt ShanShan Lin

Abdallah Fekiri Frank Isaksson Liu Xinxu Simon BjörkströmAkhandlu Idahosa

Giang Huong Phan Luis Rodriguez Simone Tarolli

Abiodun Alabi Hendrik Nyström Marcus Forsström Sonja Leskinen

Bilal Altaf Hu Yanqi Mats Jakobsson Tetiana Denysova

Bright Mills Jonas Engman Michael Lahtinen Timo Repo

Chenqing Hou Jorge Lucic Muhammad Imran Tuomas Heinonen

David Pisoni Julie Bils Pavel Synek Veli-Pekka Vieru Dmytro Kanevsky Katarina Stubbe Sarah Lindström Zhang Jin

Thank you!

@alpapag

Feedback: alpapag@gmail.com