Social Media Applications' Impact on Travel Management

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Social Media Applications' Impact on Travel Management: The Benefits, the Risks and How to be a Success amidst the Constant Change

Thank you for joining the webinar. We will begin shortly.

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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Your Moderator

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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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Your Presenters

Kate Koziol, President of K Squared

Communications

Bryan Alaspa,Social Media Lead, K Squared Communications

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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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Poll QuestionsWhat social media tools, if any, are you using to communicate with your travelers?

A: YammerB: JiveC: ChatterD: LinkedInE: Custom AppF: 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: AlwaysB: Most of the timeC: About half the timeD: Once in a whileE: never

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From Our Research: Social Media Used to Communicate to Travelers

Yammer; 8.3

Chatter; 8.3

LinkedIn; 16.7

Custom App; 16.7

None; 66.7

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From Our Research: Travelers Using Public Social Media Tools to Get Travel-Related Information

Most of the Time; 8.3

About Half the Time;

50

Once in a While; 33.3

Never; 8.3

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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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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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Poll

What is the greatest benefit of your corporate social media efforts?

A: Crowdsourcing Travel Program ImprovementsB: Delivering Valuable Travel InformationC: Creating a Community of TravelersD: Communicating Travel PolicyE: Other

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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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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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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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Poll Questions

Does public social media-obtained information conflict with your travel program information?

A: A significant amountB: A moderate amountC: A littleD: Not at all

Does public social media-obtained information cause extra work, loss of productivity or extra expense?

A: Extra workB: Loss of productivityC: Extra expenseD: No impactE: Other

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From Our Research: Does Public Social Media Conflict with Travel Program Information?

Moderately; 16.7

A little; 50

Not at all; 33.3

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From Our Research

Extra Work38%

Loss of Production23%

Extra Expense8%

No Impact31%

Does Public Social Media-Obtained Information Cause Extra Work, Loss

of Productivity or Extra Expense?

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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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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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Best Practice: Cross Promotion of Apps

• Biz card handouts

• On screen

• Handouts

• Push to large number of employees

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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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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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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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Thought of the Day

“Travel is hard enough, don’t make it

harder.”

Pat Sage, Director, Corporate Travel

Huron Consulting

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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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…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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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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From Our Research

Less than 25 Percent

50%Between 25 and

50 Percent42%

Between 50 and 75 Percent

8%

How Many of Your Travelers Use Pub-lic Social Media to Obtain Travel-Re-

lated Information?

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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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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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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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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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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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Advice for Success

“Make it easy to do the right thing and difficult to do the

wrong thing.”

Karoline Mayr, Director,

Globlal Travel ProcurementDeltek

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Supporting Communication Tools

• 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

Use Your Communications Team to Find out What Works Best

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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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Poll

How do you communicate with your travelers?

A: Email

B: Intranet

C: Text

D: Phone

E: Booking Tool

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From Our Research

Email35%

Intranet23%

Text3%

Phone13%

Booking Tool26%

How Do You Communicate With Your Trav-elers?

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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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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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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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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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The Tools

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The Tools

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The Tools

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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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The Tools

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The Tools

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The Tools

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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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The Tools

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The Tools

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Monitoring

• Keep your ear to the ground

- Radian6

- Lithium

- Social Mention

- Google Alerts

- Google Analytics

- Hootstuite

• Get Someone to Monitor!

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Summary

•Examples of successful corporate social media

•Top benefits and liabilities

•Successful monitoring tactics

•Polling travelers

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Q & AType your question into the chat box.

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Resources

• www.ksqrd.com

• www.socialmention.com

• www.yammer.com

• www.jivesoftware.com

• www.google.com/analytics

• www.google.com/alerts

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