Social Media Marketing for the Travel and Hospitality Industry
Some Travel Brands We've Gotten Results for:
Social Media Strategies for Travel and Hospitality Brands
40%
say they consider how Instagrammable a location is before
Encourage their adventurous spirit
Travel is an emotional category. Scrolling through photos of beautiful vistas and enviable hotel views evoke feelings of #FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), excitement, and wanderlust. Sharing content that mirrors these emotions is what truly connects travel and hospitality brands with their audience.
The key to connecting with your audience is to share content that gets to the heart of why they’re traveling. Is it to attend an international music festival? Or to reunite with college friends with a hotel getaway? Then share a video of the festival or a photo of the view they could get from their hotel room. When you share experiential content that encourages your audience’s adventurous spirit, your customer is that much closer to booking their flight or hotel stay.
In an industry where companies are constantly vying for customers’ loyalty, telecom brands that use personalized and empathetic communication are the ones that stand out in the crowd.
Build trust with user-generated content
Travel is one of the top areas that people seek advice on. It’s up to tourism brands to act the role of a local guide who can give advice on the best things to experience while traveling. The best way to do this is source content from your own users; after all, a recent study found that 86% of people said they’ve become interested in a specific location after seeing user-generated content.
Harness the power of word-of-mouth travel recommendations by sharing your own audience’s content. Whether it’s a photo of their most recent stay at your resort, or a comment about your airline’s friendly staff, reposting user-generated content helps authentically build trust with your audience.
74%
97% of Millennials share photos on social media while traveling (Martech Zone)
89%
89% of people said they would post about a positive travel experience (Stackla)
Leverage social listening to engage in real-time
Social media is travel and hospitality brands’ opportunity to become more than just a way to get from point A to point B or where they’ll sleep and eat.
To move beyond the transactional and into the emotional connection with your audience, it’s essential to have a conversation with them at the moment that they’re engaged. Did they check into your hotel restaurant? Leave a comment with the cocktail specials for the day. Did they share your brand’s hashtag? Engage with them post-trip with a survey asking what they liked best about their experience.
Using social listening to engage with your audience in real-time helps them embrace your brand in their environment.
“Their whole approach is very much ‘can do’ and focused on providing great service to our business.”
Julie Ayres, Communications Manager, Gatwick Airport
Our Travel and Hospitality Social Media Expertise
Our approach to social media marketing for the travel and hospitality industry involves getting under the skin of your brand and getting to know it like it’s our own.
We take a step back to evaluate the landscape: how you operate in social, how you behave against the competition, and whether there’s a missed opportunity to connect deeper with your audience. Our strategy looks at the whole picture, with a focus on understanding the consumer and helping your brand connect with them in an authentic way.
With over 20 years, The Social Element has brought travel and hospitalities companies build a presence on social media and form genuine connections with their audience.
Turn travel woes into advocacy
People travel at all hours of the day and night. That means airports need to be ready to engage with customers 24/7.
To ensure Gatwick Airport’s customers are always taken care of, our team filled in shifts whenever the airport’s team could not. Our customer care team created an integrated communication strategy, using pre approved messaging to ensure a consistent brand voice across departments.
The result was an increased recognition for Gatwick’s customer engagement, and helping them to turn negative experiences into opportunities for brand advocacy.
Cruise through travel crisis
When it comes to social media crisis for travel and hospitality companies, the question isn’t whether it’ll happen, but when. It can start from something as little as turbulence on a flight, and escalate to worried family members tweeting asking whether the passengers are safe.
The best way to handle a crisis is preparation. With the right crisis management plan in place, you can ensure that your travel brand will handle crises with ease.
Creative content based in data
Share-worthy content is crucial for travel and hospitality companies’ reach and customer loyalty – but it doesn’t stop there. Our content strategy is based on your brand’s past performance: who your customers are, what they engage with most. We then develop creative content tailored to each platform, and gather data on how your audience reacts.
By combining creativity with data, we are able to elevate travel and hospitality brands’ social media presence and brand affinity.
