Momondo and its Friend Compass: collaboration between social network and metasearch

Momondo and its Friend Compass: collaboration between social network and metasearch

Nowadays, social networks have an increasing importance; Facebook, for example, passes from a dorm network in College to 1.23 billion users (The guardian, 2014). Its evolution was amazing and the website offers an increasing number of possibilities for people and also for companies.

Using social network is not only sharing and talking with your friends. For companies it is also a way to obtain a lot of information of the different markets and maybe to get ideas to develop new applications.

Social networking is definitely an opportunity for tourism sector as it could be one of the best online places to sell or book travels. Combined with an efficient metasearch process engine, social networking represents the best interaction between services providers and consumers’ needs. The incorporation of such a relationship with new information and communication technologies contributes to the sharing of experiences, which conducts to a specific networking: potential and current clients. This specific networking is becoming a major aspect in marketing for tourism organizations. The collaboration between social network and metasearch emphasizes the increasing trust and makes bigger and stronger customer communities.

In that context, Momondo is doing an application regrouping its flight search engine and Facebook. Even if the social network allows talking and keeping in touch with your friends it is not the same than seeing them in person. Moreover, one of the main topics in Facebook is traveling. In that way the application is targeting the visiting friends and relatives segment.

Friend Compass by Momondo permits passing through Facebook to know where your friends all over the world are and to have directly the cheapest flight tickets you can get to go see them. You can also with the application book your tickets. It is a good combination of social network and flight search engine.

Moreover, you can also have a list of who in your friends is in the hottest, the farthest and the coldest destination. You can also have which friend is the less expensive or the most expensive to visit.

That application is available for Iphone and Android phone for the moment.

As visiting friends and relatives is getting really popular and recognized by destinations as one of the main important factor bringing tourism the benefit of that application is for all parties. UNWTO even predicts in 2011 that the VFR segment will be growing faster than the leisure and business segment in term of arrivals. It predicted a growth of 3.5% (UNWTO, 2011). The application will then help Facebook users to make a decision more easily, it will maybe increase the booking for companies and also bring tourist in the different destinations.

To be different and benefit from the potential market represented by social network, others flight search engines (i.e Adioso, Delta) are allowing users to be connected. Selecting different “friends” via Facebook and set out fares and schedules from where they are (from departure to arrival point), is a new innovative technologies into the tourism industry landscape.

Another example, Delta was linked with LinkedIn to provide interaction with people from different areas of business on a designated flight.

 So to conclude social network is a real opportunity for companies, metasearch, as well as online companies, and online travel agencies and tour operator. Anyway, some issues will appear. Do you want companies to have all the information on you and your friends? Would you be ready to exclusively flight with some of your professional connections made through your Linkedln profile on a designated flight?

References

Breaking Travel News. (2014). Momondo launches Friend Compass. Retrieved february 26, 2014, from Breaking travel news: http://www.breakingtravelnews.com/news/article/momondo-launches-friend-compass/

Kiss, J. (2014, February 4). Facebook's 10th birthday: from college dorm to 1.23 billion users. Retrieved March 26, 2014, from The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/04/facebook-10-years-mark-zuckerberg

Scientific Papers (www.scientificpapers.org) (2014,February). Model for estimating the potential of social networking sites usage in tourism industry in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Retrieved February 2014, from Journal of knowledge Management, Economics and Information Technology: http://www.scientificpapers.org/wp-content/files/1432_Mirza_-_Model_for_Estimating_the_Potential_of_Social_Networking_Sites_Usage_.pdf

Tnooz (2014, March). Delta links with Linkedln, Momondo uses compass for friendly flight searches, and more. Retrieved March 20, 2014 from Tnooz official website: http://www.tnooz.com/article/travel-social-roundup-march-2014/

UNWTO. (2011). Tourism Towards 2030. Retrieved March 29, 2014, from http://cestur.sectur.gob.mx/descargas/Publicaciones/Boletin/cedoc2012/cedoc2011/unwto2030.pdf