Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
seats, in-fl ight entertainment preferences, favoured television channels in hotels, meals in
restaurants and credit card usage. They have the means to paint detailed pictures of consumers
that will drive marketing initiatives to deeply engage them. Yet few of them truly maximize
the potential of the data at their disposal (Carey et al., 2012). Those in the travel sector
could follow the example of Amazon, who became the thorn in the side of every bookseller by
mining data to craft individualized customer experiences full of conversion-ready streams of
recommendations.
But mining such data does not come without a price. One related challenge facing marketers
is that social media websites remain one of the lowest-scoring categories of websites when it
comes to customer satisfaction. User concerns about privacy, including being targeted for
advertising, continues to be problematic for social media websites (ACSI 2011). In 2011, the
social media category earned a score of 70 on the American Consumer Satisfaction Index's
(ASCI) 0 to 100 scale. Wikipedia topped the social media category with 78, benefi ting from its
non-profi t position that allows users to surf, create and edit content without intrusion from
commercial messages. Google-owned YouTube came in second place with 74, while Facebook
scored a low 66. Facebook is facing intense scrutiny from consumers, courts and regulators
worldwide about how it handles the data it collects from its 845 million users (Sengupta 2012).
The scrutiny is at its most intense in Europe; a proposed Europe-wide law requires Facebook,
along with every online business, to expunge every bit of personal data at a consumer's request.
One more downside to the proliferation of online social networking for tourism and hospi-
tality companies is the loss of control over the consumer evaluation process (Kim and Hardin
2010). While reasonable criticisms taken from social networking sites could lead to further
improvements in services, consumers can easily distribute damaging information using social
media, without the opportunity for companies to resolve consumer complaints. A good example
was Oliver Beale's letter to Virgin Atlantic chairman Richard Branson which is generally
acknowledged to be the best customer service complaint letter ever (
Daily Telegraph
2009). The
complainant contacted Branson after a fl ight from Mumbai to Heathrow, to convey his disap-
pointment with the food served on board the airline. In his 2008 missive, Beale, an ad agency
employee, deconstructs a fl ight from London to Mumbai. His tirade mocks the food ('a crime
against bloody cooking'), the in-fl ight movie ('Is that Ray Liotta?') and pokes fun at Branson
(I can't imagine what dinner round your house is like, it must be like something out of a nature
documentary'), all in 1,070 hugely entertaining words. The letter also included fi ve photographs
of the 'offending' dishes. At the time of writing, theYouTube version of the complaint letter had
been viewed by over 17,000 people.
Another challenge with social media is measuring the return on investment and its impact on
the bottom line. Brands that conduct social media interactions with consumers in a meaningful
way are beginning to see a positive return
(
Cruz and Mendelsohn 2010), but there are too few
research studies that can support this claim. One study by Dholakia and Durham (2010) did
show a clear relationship between social media engagement and the bottom line. The experiment
set up a company's Facebook page and measured the effect on customer behavior. The partner
in this experiment was Dessert Gallery (DG), a popular Houston-based bakery and café chain.
The researchers launched a Facebook page and invited everyone on a DG customer mailing list
to become a fan. DG updated its page several times a week with pictures of goodies, news about
contests and promotions, links to favourable reviews, and introductions to DG employees. Three
months later, they resurveyed customers, this time receiving 1,067 responses from DG's Facebook
fans, Facebook users who did not become fans and customers not on Facebook. They analyzed
the data sets separately and then compared participants in the fi rst survey with those in the
second who had become DG fans.
