Social Media SpecialIt is increasingly becoming important for travel suppliers to avoid credibility issues in the wake of discrepancy between the official and unofficial content on the web.

Published: 13 Jun 2008

Social Media Special

It is increasingly becoming important for travel suppliers to avoid credibility issues in the wake of discrepancy between the official and unofficial content on the web.

Earlier this year, during EyeforTravel's Social Media Strategies Travel 2008 Conference in San Francisco, Hospitality eBusiness Strategies' Max Starkov mentioned that in this new Web 2.0 environment, travel consumers like to see the "official" content, descriptions and presentation of the travel product on the supplier's website/brochure/marketing piece, and at the same time review the "unofficial" content on peer review sites, blogs, etc.

"If the official content differs vastly from the unofficial content, guess which is the more credible content in eyes of today's sophisticated online traveler? All surveys and our own research point that the consumer generated content on social media sites and networks is perceived as more credible by the online travelers. The bigger the disparity between official and unofficial content, the bigger the gap in credibility," he had said.

"Travel suppliers should review the content on their websites, brochures and promotional pieces and align it with the content on the social media sites about their services/product (i.e. align the official content with the unofficial content). For example if you describe your hotel as luxurious, while all customer reviews describe your hotel as clean and nice but an economy category hotel, then you should drop the "luxurious" description, because clearly your customers do not perceive your hotel as such."

Regarding credible content on your own websites, Tom Griffiths, founder of gapyear.com, says the rule of thumb on creating your own content is 'Would it fool you?'.

"We would advise against creative home produced content which could easily be spotted as non credible and damage your brand and reputation. We have seen many companies being very effective by simply identifying happy customers and ask them to sell you to others in their own words," he says.

Analysing the situation, he said, "The world has finally woken up to negative side of Wikipedia. Just because it is written online doesn't necessarily mean that it is true! Open source / public travel advice sites are now being treated with an arms length attitude from most customers who use the advice as 'guide only'."

"Will I choose a particular hotel in Delhi because Bob from Indiana thought it was amazing? Probably not. However, 50 'Good' to 'Excellent' reviews with a few clear examples of why people like the hotel will help me decide in seconds. Although not impossible, it is very difficult for companies to deliberately cheat the system on the quality portals as users can distinguish pretty quickly between regular independent users who travel and review and those who seem to be heavily focused on one topic / company and so biased as a result," he said.

According to Griffiths, ultimately it boils down to passion and volume.

"Have a high number of passionate users and they will police the system well. Many of us bring these users into our quiet army of moderators, policing the site to ensure quality is maintained. The portals are also working hard to find ways of elevating the credible UGC to the surface, often by user weighting through site voting and readership numbers," he said.