Web 2.0 for the tourism & travel industry

Web 2.0 for the tourism & travel industry

The text begins by defining exactly the Web 2.0 as « the second generation of Web-based services that have gained massive popularity by letting people collaborate and share information online in previously unavailable ways »

The web 2.0 has been a real success in the IT world and companies have understood the crucial challenges it brought, and the tourism and travel industry is no exception in this process.

Indeed, the tourism and travel industry is among the most concerned by this technology as a majority of people now get information or even book online and rely on previous guests' feedbacks. The text relates all the possible solutions the Web 2.0 offers when it comes to increase their position on the e-market and develop their online strategy.

The blog: Blogs are web sites where entries are made in journal style and allow anyone to comment it. It is simple to create one and is one of the most interactive Internet pattern. Blogs however need to be frequently updated and the company must have things to say regularly to get an interest in the blog as it requires a lot of news to become interesting for the viewers.

The Podcast: A poadcast is an audio file that can be downloaded from a web site. Easy to create, podcasts have become an important source of information in the tourism and travel industry as it allows both customers to explain their feedback orally and companies to broadcast messages through an original way. For example, podcasts are much used to promote destinations.

The social networking and user generated content: These elements are the most relevant ones when talking about Web 2.0 trend, it allows the users to create, comment and communicate freely among with other potential users or previous customers. The social media technology has been expanding so widely that most of the big travel and tourism companies created their own page to « be in contact » with these consumers and create loyalty. The second aspect of social medias is the new challenge of guests satisfaction it conducted to as they allow customers to share their experience easily with potential consumers.

Online Videos: Online videos allowed to wider the range of possibility to explore destinations, to better imagine the product sold. Although it ever existed online videos, the Web 2.0 allowed to easier the exchange and share of videos through social medias and dedicated website which most of the time can be commented. Experiencing online videos really changed the view of the tourism and travel industries as both were a real asset for selling destinations allowing the potential customer to imagine himself in the video.

The Tagging: The tagging is a new Web 2.0 option allowing companies to be present online by being associated to a word such as « airport » « city visit »... The main idea of the tagging is to simplify the research online and sort it from the most relevant to the less one.

The Mash-Ups : The mash-up is the action of mixing two different criterias to be more visible on the market. The most relevant example is the presence of hotels on the google map.

The Web 2.0 provides fantastic opportunities to travel and tourism marketers able to understand and apply it. Companies understood the main challenge to compete on this market and this has for main consequence to tend to improve the guests satisfaction as the Web 2.0 facilitate the feedback exchanges not anymore locally but globally.

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