According a recent report, social media is the preferred online source for trip planning for 32% of travelers, ahead of official sites, Google, review sites, travel influencers, offline sources like friends and family, etc.

Stelico Consulting Group survey found out that 76% of US luxury travelers selected a hotel brand, cruise line, or airline based on social media.

Indeed, social media plays an important role in the Dreaming and Planning Phases of the digital customer journey to engage and intrigue potential customers, inform them of your property’s value proposition, services and amenities, news and offerings about your destination, etc.

But is social media a distribution channel as some in our industry insist?

Hospitality has been trying very hard to turn social media into a distribution channel all the way since 2005. For 20 years now! We tried social commerce and all of the tricks of the trade: hotel mini-sites, booking engine widgets (when Facebook and the other social platforms allowed it), SEO, exclusive social media promotions, packages and discounts, content marketing, paid advertising, similar audience marketing, etc.

In other words, social commerce/social selling is not some new initiative and has existed for two decades now. Guess what percentage of hotel bookings come from social commerce? 50%? 30%? 20%? 10%? 5%? Nah, less than 1% of hotel bookings today can be attributed somehow as referrals from social media.

Social media affects travel planning, no doubt about it. But so do the search engines. Review sites. Metasearch. AI search. Display ads. TV. Word-of-mouth. The question is, in which phase of the digital customer journey is the influence of social media most impactful? The last 20 years have given us the answer: in the Dreaming and Planning Phases, not in the Booking Phase.

At my former company NextGuest, now part of Cendyn, we had the first social media marketing department in hospitality. Before Marriott and Hilton. We were THE pioneers in social media in hospitality. We handled social media marketing for many of our clients, and we handled the technology aspect of their social media presence for all of them. And yes, of course, we tracked conversions with the best analytical software in the market. The result? A trickle of bookings. Here and there.

Why? Social media is not perceived as a booking channel by the traveling public. An engagement channel in the Dreaming and Planning Phases of the digital customer journey- yes, by all means! A booking channel - no! Booking travel is far, far more complex than that.

In hospitality the digital customer journey is like a meandering river and goes through 48 touchpoints (Google Research) - hotel websites, OTAs, apps, search engines, social media platforms, AI search, metasearch sites, online travel and destination guides, review sites, etc. - before the customer makes a hotel booking.

Max Starkov
Hospitality & Online Travel Tech Consultant & Strategist

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