At the Emetrics Summit a couple of weeks back one of the speakers posed the question: 
“Is the long tail the antithesis of social networking or is it the place that will feed social networking?”
In other words, does being low volume and niche mean that a community lacks the quantity of interactions to sustain an active social network? Or will the long tail spawn small, tightly focussed communities where quality, not quantity of interactions matter?
And the question has been rattling around in my head ever since, albeit infused with a tourism flavour.
So my question behind this post (and I must say at the beginning that I don’t have a proper answer!) is:
“Is a potential visitor, and the tourism businesses trying to engage with that potential visitor, likely to be served better by a long tail of niche travel communities and social networks, or by two or three “full service” players whose very scale means they have achieved the critical mass to serve niche interests?”
So, by implication, is it better for a hotel in Kinross to communicate primarily through say a Kinross orientated online community, or through a high volume, global player like TripAdvisor or Facebook.
And what will this mean for the potential visitor’s experience as they research their travel plans? Will they use their existing Trout fishing network to find out whether a B&B in Kinross is worth staying in, or will they attempt to negotiate a series of niche communities that they do not yet belong to? Would they prefer to default to Facebook or TripAdvisor if it met their information needs (or if even more significantly, they trust the opinions and share similar interests and experiences with the people in those communities)?
To build or take residence?
One of the reasons why I think this question matters, is because it relates to the strategic business question of how to engage in a marketing conversation with a consumer who trusts user generated content far ahead of any commercial content you can develop. (Put bluntly, potential visitors trust each other for a truthful view, rather than you).
So, should destinations and travel firms be looking to create their own niche social networks, or would they instead be better to identify and creatively reside in the most appropriate and influential platforms where they can meet and engage potential customers in two-way conversations on “neutral ground”.
And what of individual small business? Fiscal and time constraints mean that participation in existing communities is likely to be more practical for most businesses than opting for social network development. But where does a business choose to invest its time in its two-way conversations with potential customers? Can it realistically do this beyond two or three well chosen communities? Carefully identifying those networks that represent prospects with a high propensity to undertake the desired outcome is even more important when there is only time to partake in a couple of networks.
So, what travel online communities are out there already?
I’ve included some examples of travel sector online communities, covering a broad range of intents and scale. If I’ve missed what you’re doing, or you know of some excellent examples, please feel free to comment at the end of this post and highlight the online community/project.
The airline: Flying Blue Golf Club offers its members an on-line community which has golf networking as its primary focus. KLM has developed a robust, niche social network all about golfing where travellers can enter their destinations and scores, use miles to purchase golf related merchandise and book golf get-togethers with other travellers that happen to be in the same location.
The destination: GoSeeOregon bills itself as “Travel information from people you can trust”. The site lets users find other travellers who share their interests and travel preferences and generates recommendations from other members.
Travel 2.0 community: VIAmigo’s remit is to help global travellers find authentic, local experiences and insider adventures - by connecting them with personal guides from everywhere. As Jeff Goldsmith of VIAmigo explains “We’re working on a new iteration of the site based on user feedback, and we expect many more guides on the site in the coming months.”
The accommodation sector: TripAdvisor has truly achieved critical mass in the sector, with 10,000,000+ traveller reviews and opinions of hotels/holidays.
Marc Charron, General Manager for TripAdvisor Europe, explains in this Travolution article:
“Our success hinges on participation by our community. Content contributed by them is at the heart of our proposition, and it’s their reviews and recommendations, the total scope of their collective wisdom, that enables people to venture down the Long Tail of destinations, hotels, of all the possibilities and experiences to be had through travel.
What’s exciting about the trend of demand moving towards fringe destinations or niche properties or services is that we can help people “move from the world they know… to the world they do not via a route that is both comfortable and tailored to their tastes”. Many of us aim to inspire travellers, and that is as good a definition as any I’ve heard.”
The Facebook applications: Facebook has thousands of small travel or destination focused groups and communities. Yet despite more than 180 new applications being added each week, I could find only around 60 travel applications on Facebook, most of these with a tiny number of users.
By far the largest is the TripAdvisor application, Cities I Have Visited, with more than 100,000 active daily users. Users create an interactive travel map to share with friends and help them plan their trips.
Trips by Sidester.inc, is an application is for planning trips with friends and finding others planning trips to the same place at the same time. It also lets users share past travel adventures on your profile.
Another tool is Resturant Wars, a ratings application from Travature. Jeremy Almond of Travature recently commented on another post in this blog that:
“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 travellers. Hopefully the supposed “travel 2.0″ platform, that startup companies like ourselves are working on can be the catalyst.”
Any conclusions?
So, is a potential visitor, and the tourism businesses that visitor engages with, likely to be served better by a long tail of niche travel communities and social networks, or by two or three “full service” players whose very scale means they have achieved the critical mass to serve the long tail of niche interests?
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, user generated content rich social platform. Just as Tripadvisor notes, their very scale lets them serve the long tail reasonably efficiently within their platform.
And yet, the power of online communities is in the people within them – their shared interests, participation levels and trustworthiness. Ultimately, the people make the choice of what suits them best.
We recently conducted online research for an organisation to examine what websites and social networks their target markets use and which of those might be most significant in spreading awareness, shaping opinion and stimulating a desired outcome. One of the most interesting things in this specific scenario was that it was the bigger niche players that were most influential in the eyes of the customer – most of them traditional websites and online communities based on interest lines – rather than the online social networks like Facebook and MySpace.
Look at a different scenario, sector or context and I’m sure the results would be different – but I think what is significant is looking at the particular platforms and communities that work best for the potential customer. Because from the tourism business perspective, what works best for your target market is likely to be the best place for you to be interacting too.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 10:38 am and is filed under Online customer behaviour, Social media measurement, Travel 2.0. 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.