Social media marketing becomes a hot topic in Travel industry.

“According to data available in the US, users are spending on average 30 minutes at social networking sites on a monthly basis” – EyeforTravel reports. And it is known that UGC can increase conversion to bookings.

But the situation is not the same for Asian people. They are not committed enough to such kind of communication:

“According to James Sundram, Head of Asia, Lonely Planet Publications, the presence of brands on sites such as YouTube, Second Life, Facebook etc is definitely worth the investment, but the Asians are generally not ready nor committed to use such community sites for their travel planning and arrangements”. Asians are still shy to participate.

So what is the way out?

LP, for example, suggests to overcome these limits by enhancing connectivity via mobile phone:

“These developments will benefit the Asian traveller much more because of the usage trends. Asians are not known to be avid readers but Asians love their mobile phones, and penetration in HK / Korea / Singapore / Philippines etc is more than one phone per person”.

Dopplr, an online service for frequent business travellers, announced their mobile site at Nokia World. The mobile service will be available at 25 leading mobile network companies.

About service:

Dopplr lets you share your travel plans privately with a group of friends and colleagues whom you have chosen. It then tells you when people you know will be in the same cities. It also reminds you of people who live in the places you’re planning to visit.

5-6 March 2008, San Francisco
What mix of Web 2.0 initiatives best suits your business?
How travelers are using User-generated content
How successful are the multitude of traveler social network startups? How do they differentiate themselves? How can you reward customers and create incentives for them to return to your site and contribute content? How to protect your brand in the social media space?

Agenda is here

ComScore analyst Gian Fulgoni has shared some interesting data on social networking abroad. Among the findings, Fulgoni notes that there are actually more social networking users (as measured by unique visitors) in Asia-Pacific (where Friendster leads) and Europe (where Bebo leads) than in North America. Read more

Source: mashable.com: SOCIAL NETWORK NEWS

Additional link and resources

Tripit.com – online itinerary. Cool.

BootsnAll, Gusto, Real Travel, TripTie, Virtual Tourist, WAYN, Wikitravel and World66 are just a sampling of the proliferation of community sites where users share itineraries, adventures and other travel information…

Read more…