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A tangible connection to a place is a significant factor in a visitor’s propensity to travel to a specific destination. That connection point could be friends or relatives in residence, the recommendation of a trusted source or exposure via media such as TV and film.
When I first visited Vancouver almost a decade ago, I arrived clutching my copy of X Marks The Spot and spent part of the visit dutifully tracking down X-Files locations.
While I didn’t travel to Vancouver just because I was an X-Files fan, seeing the place on a TV programme I enjoyed created an awareness and emotional connection that caused me to choose the destination over alternatives.
I subsequently visited Vancouver a number of times and I believe the TV series still played a role, this time creating a “reminiscence factor” as I was again exposed to the places I had enjoyed visiting.
Vancouver Image by JMV on Flickr
It used to be that it was primarily film and television (and to a lesser extent printed media) that had this power to straddle the anticipation, experience and reminiscence stages of the tourism experience.
But now social media has an increasingly important role to play in destination selection.
Social media is a term used to describe the online technologies and practices that people use to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives, and media. It can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. Examples that are particularly significant to the tourism industry include video sharing site You Tube and Flickr, the photo sharing site.
Where does social media fit in?
A search for Vancouver on Flickr returns well over a million photos and nearly 3,000 photographer interest groups. It is possible to check out the view from hotel windows, the most picturesque scenes from every time of year, people’s favourite restaurants - and indeed X-Files locations.
You Tube has over 40,000 videos tagged Vancouver, the most popular of which (a scene of otters at the aquarium) has been viewed 8 million times and attracted almost 10,000 viewer comments.
And it is these user comments that are a major difference between traditional passive media and social media – critically, with social media there is a two-way exchange of information.
Familiarity factors as influencers
From personal to impersonal, trustworthy to unproven and passive to immersive – there are familiarity factors that create emotional connections that influence the decision to visit a destination.
Social media has the potential to undertake some of the functions of film and television in raising awareness and creating emotional engagement with a place. Additionally, the two-way information flow inherent in social media, the recommendations (or otherwise) and the very authentic, personal nature of the contributions also place it close to the realm of recommendations from family and friends.
Is there other research happening in this field?
At the Tourism Society Conference earlier this year, Iis P Tussyadiah of the National Laboratory for Tourism and eCommerce, Philadelphia, presented a fascinating research paper entitled “Mediating tourism experiences – Access to places via shared videos.” In the course of the research her project team had examined 120 You Tube videos tagged with the term New York and having attracted at least one viewer’s comment.
They examined and analysed the themes of the video content and then the keywords in the viewer’s comments.
The team found that 50% of the videos were destination/site centric – essentially providing viewers with access to foreign landscapes. 23% were about self-expression, for example conveying “hey, I’m cool” because I’m in this place. 20% of videos were “other-centric” emphasizing differences and providing access to foreign culture. Finally, 8% were activity-centric, providing samples of real experiences.
It is in the viewer’s comments that the value of the two-way flow of information is really exposed. The research team found that people were responding and commenting on the videos in ways that can be broken down as follows:
- Information Sharing
- Daydream & Reminiscence
- Testimonials
- Perceived Attractions
- Travel Stimuli
- Tourists
- Video Quality
Some viewers were aspiring and dreaming of travelling, some were moved to take action, some shared their reminiscences and others provided validation through testimonials or specific recommendations. The shared video was the hub for these different potential tourist viewpoints and needs.
Overlapping tourism experiences
The social media blurs the traditional media role of authoritative informer, with the trustworthy personal contact, falling somewhere between the two. But perhaps, most significantly it also blurs the anticipation, experience and reminiscence stages of the tourist experience - as anyone who posts their images to Flickr while still on holiday will know!
Essentially the day-dreamer, the active researcher, the tourist and the reminiscent visitor are meeting at the same place, sharing the same media excerpt and its associated comments. Together they are creating a series of tangible connection points to a specific destination –factors that will surely influence the decision to travel for those who choose to reference them.
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on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 7:32 pm and is filed under Destination research, Online customer behaviour, Social media measurement, Web analytics and web measurement.
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1st October, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Excellent discussion Vicky.
I’m happy to report that I’ve added about 2,000 of the million+ images of my home town of Vancouver.
When I travelled to Hawaii recently, I researched the “Fairmont Orchid” hotel on flickr, YouTube and Tripadvisor…before ever going to the Fairmont corporate site. The authentic guest-centric perspective found on these social media resources are much more compelling to me than artsy (& optimized) hotel website pictures.
Chris
1st October, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Thanks Chris - and I completely agree regards researching the authentic guest-centric version of the images.
I was just booking a business trip to Stockholm and made a hotel choice I never would have consider, all based on Flickr pics and Trip advisor comments.
2000 Vancouver images? Puts my 200 Highlands and Islands shots to shame!
2nd October, 2007 at 7:53 am
Vicky,
Thanks for this very interesting post and focus
10th October, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Vicky
Very interesting subject - one comment I would like to make as I am in the Tourism business here in Ireland - do we want to get “very real” here - most of my guests who pass through my Guesthouse have planned their trip and arrive with a “dream” of Ireland - we all have different aspirations - whilst I feel folks read and are influenced by tripadvisor and such sites it is becoming apparent that a lot of the content is “set up” by the service provider - where does this leave the guest, it will filter out in the end - but again - do we want to get “very real” most people travel for a change from their own invironment - reality is not all it is cracked up to be either - the dream can be the best part.
10th October, 2007 at 3:06 pm
An interesting point Margaret.
I guess that some of the best surprises as a visitor come from the unexpected gem of a place that you stay in or discover. And when you come across a place like that in reality, you’ll forgive it being a little rough around the edges if it has some emotional magic or “dream factor”.
And as you say, there have also been cases of faked user generated content. Not something that goes down well!
11th October, 2007 at 8:14 am
The power of the original “In Real Life” - and easily forgotten in all the online social networks excitement. Thanks for the timely reminder!
11th October, 2007 at 9:38 am
[...] How social media like Flickr and You Tube has become an influence on destination selection [...]
13th October, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Apologies if your comment has vanished from this thread - it is a wordpress or database issue that I am trying to rectify and not the result of editing!
I value your comments and am trying to restore them.
18th October, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Vicky, your article was really on point. As data from social platforms converges, it provides an enormous opportunity to benefit from user driven content in unexpected ways. Flickr uploaders may be posting pictures from there vacation, not realizing someone completely random may end up looking at their pictures to get an idea of how their own vacation might end up. That is the beauty (and beast) of the social platform. Certainly much of the Internet industry really gets this, and it’s definitely why mashups are so hot right now.
On the otherhand, the travel and tourism industry is, IMHO, slow to adapt to change. Tripadvisor does crowd sourcing well but they really only handle the hotel sector. And besides Tripadvisor, very few other prominent travel companies are taking any advantage of the merging of traditional services with the social platform.
Travature.com is one of the few new breed travel startups that are actively pursuing the merging of traditional travel services like flight metasearching with new social concepts like wiki travel guides, community driven restaurant reviews,flickr photostreams, etc. There is definitely a need for the Tourism Industry needs to shift its focus off themselves and onto the travelers. Hopefully the supposed “travel 2.0″ platform, that startup companies like ourselves are working on can be the catalyst.
At any rate, my perspective is with the enormous potential with new media like Youtube, Flickr, and others, its not a matter of will the Travel and Tourism industry be transformed, its just a matter of how much.
19th October, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Thanks for the headsup on Travature Jeremy, what you’re doing looks interesting.
You make an important point that businesses need to shift focus from themselves towards customers.
We’re at a point now where online is where the bulk of tourism decisions are formed and the research shows consumers are prepared to trust each other more than they are prepared to trust advertisers and organisations.
I’ve just returned from the Emetrics Summit (post to follow shortly) where understanding the customer experience and a customer-centric view of analysis and website strategy were major themes.
I do think that there is increasing awareness amongst some industries that marketing is shifting to become a two way conversation, but as you note with the tourism industry, there are few prominent shining examples out there yet.
I think it will come, as the market (or at least key segments of the market) will demand it.
I’ve across a few interesting niche examples. But I think from a user perspective, there is inherent trustworthiness in critical mass, where the fake and the extreme views become tempered by the views of the majority.
I shall finish with a question that I heard posed at Emetrics, where there was a lot of talk about the value of the long tail when it comes to search term measurement and a lot of talk about social media niches. “Is the long tail the antipathy of social networking or is it the place that will feed social networking?”
I’m not sure I know the answer, but I do think that for an industry like tourism - where there are millions of consumers, thousands of different types of desired visitor experiences, hundreds of thousands of destinations, millions of different businesses from restaurants to attractions - there is scope for several bigger players to amass a broad, content rich social platform, because consumers are looking for breadth and depth of information about their potential experience.
For anyone unfamiliar with the long tail concept, there original Wired article is here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html?pg=1&topic=tail&topic_set=
Thanks for your comment Jeremy
31st October, 2007 at 10:07 am
[...] del destino? Como puse en el post que hago referencia, a mi modo de ver no. Una investigación de Highland Business Research pone de manifiesto el uso de las plataformas Flickr y Youtube (hostings sociales) como herramientas [...]
28th February, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Jena
Great topic Vicky!
I urge you and your readers to take a look at the My Baltimore site as an example of branded marketing social media website. I think it’s a brilliant idea and hope to see other communities to use this model in the future.
http://www.visitmybaltimore.com/index.html
29th February, 2008 at 12:55 pm
A rather shameless plug there Jena - hence my delay in deciding to whether to approve the comment or not - but an interesting example, so thank you.
There are number of other destinations/communities that I think are currently working very successfully in this manner, for example:
Sweden - http://communityofsweden.com
Tourism BC - http://uk.britishcolumbia.travel/en-CA/default.htm
and also Holland - http://us.holland.com/
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