5 Star Tourism and Travel on the Web

Leisure and luxury travelers have thousands of destinations to choose from. For many years, numerous top tier hotels chose to stay away from the online as a way to avoid being associated with generalist online booking and travel agencies like Expedia and the likes.

Data from Eye for Travel and Surrey University indicate that the online tourism sector showed a 54% increase between 2002 and 2008, while all traditional media channels remained stable. On the other hand, for the period 2008-2012, online tourism is expected to increase by 14% with a decrease in the offline of 1,2%.

Indeed this increase in online activities for the tourism and leisure sectors can be attributed to the economic crisis in that it has paradoxically shifted the overall advertising and marketing spend from the offline to the online. It is evident this particular sector is now betting on the internet as well as innovative web marketing initiatives to steer luxury travelers in their direction and increase their online ROI.

Reservations are no longer sufficient just through institutional  and property websites. Today, there are many available ad hoc online hotel/travel agencies and directories such as mrandmrssmith.com, luxurylink.com and theknot.com that offer all kinds of options and services to choose from.

“Power is shifting hands,” confirms 77Agency Managing Director, Marco Corsaro. Power is moving from the company to the customer– the customer is the brand. This is why having brand presence online is fundamental nowadays.

“One of our clients, Terme di Sirmione, a five-star hotel and spa located by the Lake Garda in the province of Brescia, has recently asked us to create a Facebook Page which today is followed by nearly 17,000 fans, who freely tell us about their thermal experience,” comments Corsaro.

“The beauty of social media networks — he continues — is that they allow for both advertising and interaction amongst brands and customers. It’s very important to be engaging in your communication strategies, and that is why social sites such as Facebook are being used by many companies today across all industry sectors, not just luxury travel.”

Below is an article issued on Pubblicità Italia which features 77Agency and our thoughts on the relationship between social media and the luxury travel and tourism industry…pretty much what has already been discussed throughout this post. (click to enlarge)

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 7:16 pm and is filed under 77News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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