1. 3. ww
Succeeding in the travel industry..
By striking out new paths..

2. #Get connected
The new role of the communication
professional in the travel industry
Valentina, Patricia, Janna & Lindsey
Index
1.
3.
4.
5.
2.
4.
6.

3. 1.
Network
theory
“ The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not only fighting the old but
building the new. ”
24, Single, Boston, USA
Trainee at Tho mas Cook,
Outgoing, smiling, extrovert,
curious, social
Persona, David Peeters – Trainee
BIO
I had the chance to meet many new people and to get a huge knowledge about tourism
and travelling. I decided to apply to a travel agency because I have a passion for
travelling. I would love to help people planning their dream holidays, advise them of
dream destinations, perfect adventures and possible activities. As I am only 24 years
old, I love social medias. Therefore, I would love to work with my clients with the help of
social media platforms. My aim is to create a community where people can exchange
their ideas and experiences with other travellers.
Enhancing my acquaintance of processes for
providing customer and personal services.
Own a travel agency.
Use social medias.
Improving my knowledge of sales and marketing.
GOALS
Lastminute unforeseen.
Not understanding the task.
Not being able to reach new
costumers or retain old ones.
FRUSTRATION

4. Introduction
Not only travelling itself is something most
people at any age love to do. Moreover, the
so-called work and travel tends to become
more and more popular for the younger
generation. Since 2000 the number of
people who travelled to Australia, for example,
to experience the work and travel rose from
79,900 to 226,812 (Jo, 2016), it nearly tre-
bled. Agencies like Expedia or Lastminute.com
nowadays offer different possibilities, hand-
books, guidelines and even personal
advice to guide and support the travellers
during their journey. This is what I assess to be
a very useful and brilliant way to work hand in
hand with all the people who do not have any
clue on how to handle their holiday. Therefore,
this is the sector where I see
myself working in the future as a
communication expert, being able to make a
noticeable change.
There are a lot of changes in the travel
sector due to the processing connectedness of
the whole world, which need to be faced and
adapted to by the travel sector.
Therefore, my purpose is to make the people
working in the travel sector aware of all
these changes related to the
connectedness of the whole world and to
improve the communication with their clients,
that the costumers finally get the feeling of
being understood. I want the travel sector to
become a place where the connected people
can feel unconnected if they want to. I want
them to feel safe.
In the following chapter, I will explain the
required basic knowledge to understand how the
connected world and the communication of the
different organizations go hand in hand and to
finally reveal the consequences of the Network
Society on PR.
“Travel is the only thing you
buy, that makes you richer.”
(Unknown, 2012).
“The network is a pattern
that is common to all life.
Wherever we see life, we
see networks.”
(Capra, 2002:9).
In the last decades, the Internet has changed the way people approach life and communication.
Today it is preferable to google a place and book a holiday on the Internet rather than physically
go to the travel agency and talk with the advisors. But why is this happening? To be able to
answer this question I have to refer back to the concept of a network. From what I learnt at uni-
versity, “a network is a set of interconnected nodes” (Castells, 2013). Any single node is relevant
and necessary to maintain the network alive, especially for its performance. Thus a network has
no epicentre and is always developing. If we had to translate this concept to social life, networks
would represent the communicative organisations that people apply in their daily life. For instance,
the network is represented by an organisation and its nodes are the employees who work within
the organisation.
How can I understand what a network is?

5. Today, thanks to the internet, many travel
websites, blogs and forums have risen to
allow people the sharing of information and tips
about travelling. People trust and rely on other
people´s experiences and suggestions and as a
result, it has become easier either to choose or
book holidays. People prefer to read and
believe reviews instead of adverts. According to
the Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising Report,
83% of online respondents in 60 countries
say they trust the recommendations of friends
and family most (McCaskill, 2015). 88% of con-
sumers say they trust online reviews as much
as personal recommendations. They also affirm
that positive reviews make them trust an orga-
nization more.
But still, owned (media) channels are also
among the most trusted advertising formats
with 70% (Anderson, 2014). 95% of the
people reading an evaluation of a hotel or any
other service, focus on negative opinions. This
can be related to the fact that people act
accordingly to their emotions towards a
situation (Dixon, 2014).
A travel agency should take this into account
conversing about their communication and
marketing strategy. Consumers´ decisions will
always be influenced by advertising, holiday
trends and most importantly by the social
environment.
Furthermore, “the network society power is no
longer controlled by institutions, organizations,
or symbolic controllers. It is diffused in global
networks of wealth, power, information and
images, which circulate around a variable
landscape” (“Network Society”, 2016). Thanks to
the development of new technologies, the world
as we know it today will be revolutionised
during the next years. Technologies and its use
evolve in an exponential way. For this reason,
these technologies are called “exponential
technologies” or “accelerating technologies”
(Palao, 2014). Thanks to networks and
communities, more exponential organizations
such as Airbnb and Couchsurfing emerge.
These prevail over the
competition represented by
travel agencies and hotels
because they are able to
connect people easily to each
other creating a network
around the organisation itself.
As a result, they are able to
share feedbacks and
opinions. “This enables social
units (individuals or
organisations) to interact
anywhere, anytime, while
relying on a support
infrastructure that
manages material resources
in a distributed informati-
on power grid” (Castells et al.,
2006b).
This kind of company is
really hard to fail because
even though a member will
leave the group, another one
will sooner or later take his
place and enhance the
performance of the company.
On the other hand, hotels,
hostels, bed and breakfasts
and so on, have lost their
charm. First of all, they do
not give the possibility to
clients to connect each other,
and moreover, there is an
epicentre which is
represented by CEOs and
managers of the organisation.
These enterprises are
weaker today than ever
before because of the
competitive sector
represented by the internet.
If a manager or a CEO quits
his job, the company would
suddenly lose an important
member who makes the
difference, while on Airbnb
everybody has the same
importance and contributes
the same amount of work
towards the success of the
company.
Exponential organization

6. As I now know what a network is, I additionally
need to find out what is meant by the so-called
Network Society. According to Castells, a new
culture is formed by several networks. Castells
revealed that there are three independent
processes that have come together to build a
new society:
1.) Digitalisation
2.) The economic crisis of capitalism
and communism
3.) New social movements like environ
mentalism and feminism (communities)
As we can clearly recognise, the economic
structure and culture have changed. Due to
these changing trends, the economy became a
global and informational one with a culture of
real virtuality. One can say, that these three
processes together created a new network
society. Transferring this fact to the travel
industry, I want you to know that this is closely
connected to the existing and permanently
changing trends in the whole world, it is marked
by a continuous, fast and huge range of
changes (Dixon, 2014).
The progressive connectedness of the
whole world creates a big challenge for the
whole touristic market (Kirigs, 2014). If I am
talking about the network society and its
changes, the most important issue I have to
mention is the processing digitalization, the
integration of digital technologies into the
everyday life of everybody.
When I was going to school, we used books, all
we needed was a pen and a notebook. Soon
we started to learn how to use a computer. It’s
crazy how fast things have changed. Nowadays
I can’t imagine how to work withoutw my laptop
and smartphone. Kids are practically born with
an Ipad in their hands. We are all connected.
Connected to different networks. Connected to
‘things’. I consider the communication
development and the digitalization as very
interesting revolutions, which we need to tackle
and where we need to adapt.
How am I able to define the network society?
Years ago people wanted to have outstanding
holidays, with as much fun and adventure as possible and with Wi-Fi in their surroundings. Peo-
ple nowadays are increasingly interested in spending their holidays in a quiet, calm and uncon-
nected environment due to the connection of theworld and the need and demand for being
online the whole day.
This is not only an interesting fact, but it can also be seen as another weak signal, which shows
that the people are moving in another direction than years before. From the want of having
access to the
internet, they are moving to the desire to stay offline during their vacation
(O´Ceallaigh, 2013).

7. “Change is the law of life.
And those who look only to
the past or present are
certain to miss the future”
(Kennedy, 1963).
Everything I just explained builds the basis of
the
following paragraph that points out to which
extent the
Network Society is able to influence the PR
strategy of the travel sector.As we are now
aware of all the
factors which trigger the progressive connec-
tedness of the whole world, I would like to out-
line the changes which happened during the last
years due to the progressive connectedness
worldwide. I want to go into detail and reveal
the consequences of these changes in PR.
Airbnb vs. Hilton –
the big fish gets caught by an underdog.
The first thing I would like to mention is that
larger organizations like Hilton or Marriott have
no longer any chance to be on top of the mar-
ket as exponential organizations like Airbnb,
HomeExchange and TripAdvisor are going to
be used and admired increasingly by the travel-
lers. The hospitality sector is expanding quickly
with the help of services like these. I would say,
that the new way of conducting businesses
typical of these organisations represent weak
signals in the travel sector.
The connected world -
Diving board for bargain hunters
The second aspect we should keep in mind
is that improved booking tools allow people
to look for their perfect destination in a more
efficient way. The increasing transit connec-
tivity and the huge and wide range of offers
open up more options and possible choices
for travellers than ever before. They are al-
ways looking for any kind of deals and sales.
Everyone is looking for more, for less (Tru-
cash123, 2016). With the help of improved
searching tools, the decision-making process
gets easier and the search for a suitable offer
more probable (Steinberg, 2013).
To your country of destination within a
few clicks
The third point to outline is that people´s wil-
lingness of people to spend as much time as
possible in planning their holidays decreases
tremendously. People are more likely to spend
as less time as possible for the planning part.
They love the idea of figuring out a hotel last
minute via apps like Hotel Tonight. Even those
people who need to know that they are
having a bed waiting for them in their
country of destination, increasingly rely on
mobile apps for last minute decisions. What
I want to say is that the connected world
makes the planning of a trip a lot easier and
reduces the amount of time, which needs to
be spent.
People do not want to stay hours in a travel
agency reading through all the
information. They do not want to waste time
while checking unnecessary information.
Therefore, the PR of the travel sector needs
to be catching, stimulating and activating.
Thus, in the past few years, these kinds of
websites succeed to attract the majority of the
people and it is likely that in the future even
more persons will book a vacation via internet.
Not only prices are cheaper but it is the idea
behind Airbnb that interests people. The facility
to connect to other people and being part of a
community is what people are now interested in.
A call to action needs to be created as the
costumers would otherwise not be interested
in exploring what the message hides (Stein-
berg, 2013).
With the help of collective intelligence into
your personal dream vacation
Another aspect to emphasise is that travellers
do not want to be limited by a preprinted book
or a preconfigured package due to their thirst
for adventure and adrenalin kick to explore
something totally new. Instead, they will take
advantage of new interactive planning tools that
are flexible enough to handle their innumerable
and ever changing interests. Or even better,
they just want to read through some reports of
people who already did the same trip. Learning
from their experiences and make use of the
mass intelligence which can be found on the
whole internet (Steinberg, 2013).
The internet of things is creating exciting op-
portunities for the travel and hospitality indus-
try. By connecting smart devices, systems,
processes and people in new ways, a lot of new
possibilities open up.
What are the main changes from the unconnec-
ted past to the connected future of the world?

8. Within 10 seconds you could have lost
a lot of costumers
Another aspect which needs to be outlined, is
that due to the connectedness of the whole
world and the possibility to get information
online within a split second, people leave web-
sites after 5-10 seconds, if they are not
uploading or if there is any technical issue.
What I mean is that the travel industry is able
to lose customers within 5-10 seconds if their
homepage is not well structured and technically
perfect. Keeping this fact in mind, we need to
make sure that while using social media to get
our message to the costumer, these issues are
being checked and are not offering any space
to lose the costumer (Dixon, 2014).
Facebook, Whatsapp, TV, etc. -
our worst enemies
Another aspect which needs to be outlined, is
that due to the connectedness of the whole
world and the possibility to get information
online within a split second, people leave
websites after 5-10 seconds, if they are not
uploading or if there is any technical issue.
What I mean is that the travel industry is able
to lose customers within 5-10 seconds if their
homepage is not well structured and technically
perfect. Keeping this fact in mind, we need to
make sure that while using social media to get
our message to the costumer, these issues are
being checked and are not offering any space
to lose the costumer (Dixon, 2014).
Thanks to the connected world and the
digitalization, for taking your costumer to
paradise you only need some “glasses”
nowadays. Virtual travel assistants represent a
big growth industry in the travel market. Virtual
Reality and Augmented Reality are increasingly
used to deepen the travel experience of the
costumer. Thanks to this technical progress,
planning the journey is more seamless,
interactive and simple for the costumer. Not
only booking, the information collection and the
navigation around the destinations can be made
easier through an app on the mobile device, but
also the translation of any written or spoke
message can be simply done with the help of
AR and VR (Christina, 2016).
It means a lot to airlines, hotels, resorts, cruise
lines and rental car fleets. The information that
is coming from all these connections (big data),
can be used to deliver personalized campaigns
and to make travel experiences better than ever
before. The internet of things actually helps the
highly competitive and schedule-driven industry
turn information into action.
Apps and Platforms –
how to generate more turnover
One should not forget about the location-based
marketing and the mobile-linked travel tools
that are also becoming increasingly important
to the travel industry in the next 3-5 years,
as they are all saving time and supporting the
quick communication worldwide (Dixon, 2014).
Another issue, which I want to add is that travel
platforms are helping us travel agencies to sell
more than we could on our own. Platforms like
Hotel Tonight, Tripadvisor, Skyscanner, Airbnb
or Travelstarter are only a few examples being
the best option to make the costumer aware of
the hottest and latest deals (Anderson, 2016).
Because of all these changes, we are finding ourselves in a time where innovation, digitalization and
new inventions have the highest priority and quickest development. Keeping this in mind and being
aware of this new way of life, we really need to face these new trends and get the best out of it to
react in an appropriate way to the wishes, demands and needs of our customers.
What can be done? How can we react?Changes we have to face:
Exponential organisations like Airbnb and Tripadvisor are the
rising stars in the travel sector heaven
Booking is becoming more efficient, easy and broad for
the user
People want to spend as little time as possible with
selecting their information and deciding process
Mind the costumers thirst for adventure
People want the information to reach them as fast as
possible. They are not waiting for more than 5-10 seconds
Costumers are distracted by the mass media 24/7
Take the hospitality sector as a serious competitor of
large organisations like Marriott or Hilton
Concentrate on last minute offers and an appealing message
transformation trough platforms, social media handy apps
A brilliant structured homepage and an IT specialist will
help to face and solve these risky factors/problems
Build up innovative booking tools and respond to the
need of the costumers
Take advantage of new interactive planning tools and
the collective intelligence
Brilliant, catching and appealing message
transformation and advertising
Implement these communication tools to catch the
costumer in an emotional way
VR and AR are increasingly used to deepen the travel
experience of the costumer
If travel agencies do not adapt to costumers´ needs, neither will they succeed in becoming a guide on
the costumers´ way to the perfect journey nor will they manage to establish their service (Jo, 2016).
It also becomes more and more
popular that travel agencies or or-
ganizations use VR or AR to offer
their possible costumers a taste
of how holidays with the prevailing
company could feel like. Companies
already using this tool have under-
stood, that they need to catch the
consumers on an emotional basis
in order to activate him. Lufthansa,
for example, is one of these com-
panies using AR und VR in their
PR strategy. They already took
the costumer on a trip to Florida,
where he had the possibility to
explore the whole journey with the
help of VR glasses. If you would
like to see more, on the image !
Conclusion

9. To outline a best practice example of an organization that
manages to connect people in an outstanding,
innovative and broad way, I
would like to mention liberty
travel, a website which
connects people as well as
places. Liberty travel
understood how to integrate the
latest trends in social media and
real life to their holiday offers. On their website you
have the possibility to read blog posts, journals, watch videos,
take a look at the latest Facebook posts, get inspired by ideas
on how to spend the time at your place of destination, chat
with an expert and have a possibility to contact them directly
as well as many other nice aspects.
Liberty travel really got how to positively
inspire the network society and answer their
demands, wishes and needs. If you would like
to see more and dive into a website full of
innovative and latest trends and
communication instruments to attract the
costumer.
Get inspired. Get connected. CLICK on the
IMAGE
(http://www.libertytravel.com/ )- =
SENSOR TECH VIDEO!!
2.
Network
analysis and social
media mapping

10. Hello everybody, as I have been working as an
online marketer for my hometown in Milan, I
would like to explain a bit more about some
missed opportunities in the marketing world.
What are social graphs and how can marketers
make use of them? How can we implement
influencer marketing in our online marketing
strategy? Why is social media monitoring a
must-do for travel agencies and how can we
improve our social media strategy by means of
digital analytics? Let’s discover the answers
together!
Social graphs; an audience with an au-
dience with audiences
Imagine you’re in Milan. You love shopping,
good coffee and pizza. You walk down the
streets and look surprised when you feel
raindrops falling down on your face. Dark
clouds start to cover the sun. Your phone is
aware of everything that’s happening and you
receive an email. There’s an invitation to a
guided walk to the nearest shopping center plus
a discount offer for certain brands.
Your phone There’s also a tip that one of your
Facebook friends just checked in at a coffee
company only 10 minutes away.
Then your stomach starts to rumble.
You start walking to that coffee company while
texting your friend: ‘Like to share a pizza J ?’.
When you open Trip Advisor the pizza
restaurants appear first. (Strachan, 2012)
How can a phone be this smart? Of course,
partly because of sensor technology but also
because everything you share and everything
you do is registered. Your travel experience has
been personalized by using big data and social
graphs.
Social graphs?..
“Good content isn´t about using the right medium, it´s about the way you are telling
a story.”
28, Single, Career builder, Milan, Italy
Online marketer manager at Charming
Italy Tour Operators, Extrovert, friendly, self-
confident, modern, social, ambitious
Persona, Felice Rossi – Online Marketer
BIO
As an online marketing manager, I am responsible for my hometown Milan. I absolutely
love this city and like to share this with the world. My passion became my job. Telling
other people stories, so good that they all want to experience it themselves.
I like to find myself in a continuously changing environment to keep learning new things
every day. I know a lot about all new developments and technologies and noticed sadly
that not many Travel agencies make use of all the given possibilities online.
Spreading her love for Milan.
To grow a strong reputation.
Keep improving her marketing skills.
GOALS
Bad adverts.
Getting poor results from
marketing efforts.
When people talk really slow.
FRUSTRATION
Introduction

11. “Travel is a social
product. We
experience it with
others and it’s
something that often
reflects our interests.” –
Matt Rhodes
At the agency I work for, we already use these
graphs. First I will further explain what a
social graph (SG) is: Everyone has different
relationships. I remember we used to write down
personal details of our relatives in an agenda or
address book.
Nowadays, since the internet has broke down the
barriers of connecting and communicating with
people around the globe, we collect and
maintain connections on online social
platforms. But how do we get an over-
view of all these people we know from
different networks?
(Owyang, 2007)
A SG displays the personal relations and
connections between people, groups and
organizations in a social network. Persons or
organizations are called actors, which are
nodes in the graphic. The lines between
these nodes are called ties. These ties have
their own character. A social graph can be
seen as a global map where you can see how
every person is related to one another. The ties
will lead to groups concerning family, friends,
interests or business communities on social
websites. (Rouse, 2010)
As you can see in the example, a
social graph has direct and indirect
ties. The striped ties are not direct
connections but the people definitely
have something in common. They
both listened to the same music, po-
sted by the same person. Our online
behaviour is all registered and linked
to each other
(Learningsolutionsmag, 2011).
Facebook, but also Twitter, LinkedIn,
Google+ and many more networks
all have their own SG. If we use the
information of the SG which, we are
able to make personalized recom-
mendations for travellers (Strachan,
2012).
Knowing your own social graph is valuable
because it’s useful to see who you are
connected with. For companies like Facebook
it’s interesting as well because they have a lot
of information of every user such as their
interests, photographs, choice of music and
opinions about almost everything. They can
use all this data for things like recommending
‘friends you might know’ or showing you what
events your friends are going to. Besides that,
third parties can make use of the social graphs
as well. Trip Advisor for example, works
together with Facebook. Whenever you’re
searching for reviews, the first ones that will
pop up has been written by friends who are a
part of your (Facebook) social graph
(Choudary, 2015).
Every person has its own personal graph, which
can be used to provide personalized, relevant
holiday/travel recommendations that will inte-
rest him or her.
This is a big opportunity for travel companies
because travel is the most shareable topic on
social platforms
(Statista, 2016).
Considering this fact, travel companies should
look for insights in what customers want now
or in the future by analysing social graphs.
Also, if you’re the first one picking up signs about
people’s needs by means of social media monitoring,
you can differentiate your services from your
competitors (Honigman, 2014).
But how does all this information spread? Well,
that’s because of API’s. API means Application
Programming Interface. It’s the messenger that
makes all the interactivity possible. For example,
if you want to book a flight it’s smart to use an
online travel service to compare the prices of
different airlines. It’s the API’s who goes from
the travel service to the different airlines to get
the information and bring it back to the service
again. Without the API’s, there would be no
connectivity. Without the API’s, the social graphs
from Facebook wouldn’t be able to reach Trip
Advisor.

12. Influencers
Some people have a more extended SG than
others. I can only imagine what the SG of
Justin Bieber looks like. (The most watched
person on the entire world when it comes to
VEVO, Instagram and other social media
platforms) (Kaufman, 2016).
People love him, want to see what he’s doing,
where he’s going and what he’s wearing. If he
posts a picture in your hotel, all his followers
will know about it and some will be in line at the
front door to book a room. Well, this is an
extreme example but that is how online
influencer marketing works.
You don’t need to be famous to become an
Influencer but you do need to be likeable.
Popular travel influencers are known by taking
beautiful pictures and showing interesting
places in the world. I love to read stories about
companies that use this modern way of
marketing. Alaska Airlines did a great job
asking Caleb Diaz, a popular travel influencer/
photographer to fly from LA to Mammoth
Lakes for the weekend. He could also bring a
friend to go on this adventure. Everything was
paid for them. All he needed to do is to write a
blog for #Weekendwanderer, which will be
published on the website.
No need to be famous..
VS
Caleb was over excited, told all his friends and
family, wrote about it on his own blog and
posted lots of pictures on Instagram. More
than 100k followers saw his enthusiastic
experience (Diaz, 2016).
Would you like to see this blog?
Click on Caleb >
Companies like Expedia have Travel Blogs on their
website as well. It’s just a fact that people like to see and
read about others’ experiences on social platforms.
(Expedia, 2016). That’s one of the reasons why Trip
Advisor has become so successful. 3 out of 4 travelers
get ideas from social media. (Danchenko, 2015)
At our travel agency, we use social media
monitoring tools to see who our target
audience is. We search for persons (not
companies) male or female, who talk
about #travel in #Milan or anything rela-
ted to it. Now we can see
percentages of male/female, age etc.
The next thing we do is searching for
influencers, which fit in our company and
are able to reach the target audience. So
for example, if 70 percent of the people
who talk about Milan is female we need
to find an influencer related to travel and
has a lot of female followers. We can
search by ourselves to track down hash
tags but this would cost a lot of time.
There are different tools you can use
such as Mention. Here you can find the
score for mentions from the web, twitter,
forums, blogs etc.
Where to find influencers?

13. Travel industry will benefit when real-time
interaction in social media finally kicks in. Social media is changing the levels of
engagement between the industry and customers. Think of check-ins, Twitter, fan
pages, user reviews, sharing,…
However, the missed opportunity is co-creation of real-time experiences between
marketers and travellers.
Let’s say you would like to ar-
range a chance to see champi-
onship tennis players practicing
this afternoon. It’s difficult
to find that information via a
Twitter or Facebook app today
because the information isn’t
organized well. What is accor-
ding Buhalis (2013) the most
efficient way to solve this pro-
blem? Travel agents should give
personalized advice and tips
through
real-time interaction so that customers feel that they are guided throughout their
journey.
The effort for helping one traveller on their trip should be amplified and magnified
in positive word of mouth, so it doesn’t mean an intensive cost investment if done
efficiently. – Buhalis
Let’s see what the future brings.
Signal..
Tourism Australia is seen as a content marketing leader for its creative
use of social media. Australia has no less than 7 million fans and is the
most popular destination on Facebook. How has the page become such
a success?Their technique is encouraging fans
to contribute. As many as 95% of the content
is created by fans. They tell their stories with
pictures and Tourism Australia also encourages
them to do so. Afterwards they try not to turn
it into a commercial message. Besides, Austra-
lia offers a plethora of natural scenery but they
also post photos of lesser-known attractions on
social media such as gourmet, food and wine.
Moreover, they integrate virtual reality promotio-
nal content into their social media platforms and
their mobile app.

14. Social media monitoring
Social Media Monitoring. A lot of people have
heard that term more than once. But do they
really remember what it means and what an
impact it has on their business and personal
lives?
Working in the travel sector for many years
now as a communication expert, I have spoken
to a lot of people who are not really aware of
the relevance and importance of Social Media
Monitoring.
But how is this even possible?
Let´s check the facts:
➢ Every minute the internet users type hundreds of
thousands of tweets into the www, post
something on Facebook or upload a video on Youtube
➢ At the same time, millions of people are making
search queries on google
Social Media has taken over the world, more than 2 billion
people are now online, sharing their product experiences
and private moments with each of us (Brand24, 2013).
Considering these facts, you as a person wor-
king in the travel sector who is willing to make
a change, should definitely think about SOCIAL
MEDIA as the biggest chance you have, to be
one step closer to your costumer and to recog-
nize their wishes and needs.
As the definition of Social Media Monitoring, in the
following shortened as SMM, and as the impact of
it on the Network Analysis is not quite well known, I
would like to start with a short definition of SMM:
SMM means the identification, observation, evalua-
tion and analysis of User-Generated-Content in so-
cial networks. Of course, SMM is about the content
which concerns your company, your target audience
and your competitors. Commercial reports, articles
and news are not taken into consideration. Further-
more, one should pay attention to the different plat-
forms and analyse them differently, separated from
each other (Sen (n.d.))..
Social media
Monitoring
This analysis records the emotions in Social Media, analyse them and is able to read and
interpret them (Bürge, 2013).
Most of influencer blogger are Social Media opinion leaders and journalists. The Social Media
opinion leaders are very active at SM platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Youtube.
In the form of articles, commentaries, opinions and repostings, they have a lot of influence on
the Social Network Society as they are seen as kind of a role-model.
Influencer
Would you like to know how to identify
an influencer? Click on the laptop !
To measure the influence of an influencer on the
people, several variables are important.
Firstly, you need to keep in mind that not only the
number of followers is highly important, but that
it is more about aspects like the reach which tells
a lot about the popularity of an influencer. The
second variable to mention here is the resonance
that tells us about the frequency of a message,
how long it appears and how high the engagement
is. The third factor is the relevance of the post,
meaning the authority of the sender, and the rela-
tionship of trust. (Adam Parker, 2013)
When we talk about Social Media Monitoring
there are some relevant numbers which need to
be taken into consideration:
Posts (pos./neg.), mentions, commentaries,
sentiments, amount of blog readers, range,
keywords and topics, registered blog readers,
key opinion leader/influencer, cross-/up-selling,
top-topic and top-keywords
(“Social Media Monitoring Konzept” (n.d.)).
I guess there might still be some uncertainties,w
this is why I would like to expand two of the
metrics in a definition list:

15. If you are still not really convinced why you should
concentrate on the social media monitoring, I am
going to give you some additional input that will
definitely widen your horizon:
- SMM gives information about how and if your
company, your product or your service are perceived
by the customers
- SMM tells you how often people talk about you
and reveals the predominating mood towards you
- SMM unravels if there is something
going on that could damage your reputation
(e.g. negative blogpost of a disappointed customer)
- SMM shows you which topics are the most
discussed and relevant ones in your field/sector
- SMM reveals weak signals which can become
an important trend
- SMM shows you which persons of your field
are seen as experts and influencers
- SMM gives information about your target
audience and their wishes, needs and demands
- SMM shows you what your competitors are
doing
- SMM points out the expectations of your
target audience
I guess these aspects have given you a large and
convincing insight on the possibilities and benefits of
SMM
(Weinberg, Pahrmann, & Ladwig, 2012).
Of course, SMM can´t be done all by yourself,
therefore it is advisable to use a social media
monitoring tool which suits your needs best. As
there are a lot, you should definitely try a few
of them to find out which tool matches your
needs best. However, there are some free tools
that are really handy, but they are still not com-
parable to enterprise-level tools, such as Brand-
watch. But still, it all depends on your specific
needs (Mindruta, 2013).
To only mention a few of them, I want to men-
tion tools like Hootsuite, TweetReach, Klout,
HowSociable, IceRocket, SumAll and Google
Alerts. Each tool is entirely different compared
to another. You as a customer have the pos-
sibility to choose design, layout, content and
operation preferences. If you don´t like the way
TweetReach illustrates the Social Media con-
tent, just try another tool that fits your needs
in a more appropriate way.
It might be still unclear how these Social Me-
dia Monitoring tools are working, therefore I
prepared 2 Social Media Monitoring Tools and
explained them to you:
It might be still unclear how these Social Media Monitoring tools are working,
therefore I prepared 2 Social Media Monitoring Tools and explained them to
you:
Social media monitoring tool
Explanation
Explanation
Hootsuite Even though, HootSuite is optimized for managing the social me-
dia content of Twitter accounts, it is still commonly used to manage
online brands and to submit messages to a variety of social media
services like Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.
HootSuite provides a browser-based dashboard that keeps their
user up-to-date on their Social Media account. Besides a full versi-
on, HootSuite offers a lite version of its service.
If you would like to know all the details of HootSuite and its func-
tioning, please click here and get enlightened: http://mashable.
com/2013/09/18/hootsuite-beginners-guide/#02uC4K5NIgqG
Google Alerts Google Alerts offers you the possibility to stay updated and to get
the latest news and current information concerning a special topic,
that you would like to observe, without giving a lot of effort.
At the website of Google Alerts, you enter your keyword, the one
you would like to get information and content about. Afterwards,
you can choose how the results later on, should be given to you,
in which frequency and in what manner. At the end, you are crea-
ting your Alert and Google sends you an Email in regular intervals
which contains a summary about the most important topics related
to your keyword (Montag, 2011).
Once you have the data you can undertake
analysis, and finally, reach social business
intelligence; using all these insights to know
your customers better and improve your marke-
ting strategy (Mindruta, 2013).
For you as somebody who is working in the
travel sector SMM is highly important because
the trends regarding the booking procedure and
the travelling itself go straight towards
the online world. Like already mentio-
ned in Chapter 1, people are more likely
to use Tripadvisor than a pre-printed
travel guide.
They trust the words and experiences of others
more than the words of an agency.
Therefore, you should be aware of all that stuff
which is going on in the internet
concerning your field and your target audience.
You have never had a better possibility to watch
your surrounding than with the help of SMM
nowadays. Use SMM, stay updated.
Expierences more trustfull..

16. Digital analytics
In our travel agency digital analytics is taken
seriously. We have skilled people who work
hard to collect data from current and potential
customers who access our website. They
analyse those data and give us the report so
that we can understand where we are doing
well and where we need to take action and
improve our services and performance.
Our team is able to collect data such as age,
sex, nationality, preferences based on likes/
comments/retweets and so on.
This helps us to elaborate strategies to
individually fit our costumers’ needs, based on
the data that we collect about them, and also to
record their activities to deliver a better service
in future occasions.
“In god we trust;
All others must
bring data”
- William Edwards Deming
Of course, a 23 year old couple have different
needs and preferences than a 65 years old couple
and so on. We have to understand people’s needs
and desires and act upon them by creating cons-
ciousness and commitment toward our
company.
The objectives we set are for instance: online and
offline purchasing, positive feedbacks and reviews
from our clients, high level of engagement and so on.
We aim to succeed those objectives and to do so we
use digital analytics outcomes to
investigate and study our consumer’s behaviours to
understand how we can deliver a successful service.
We start with measurements and we always improve
and enhance our business. Qualitative data are useful
to us because they tell us why consumers act in a
certain way. We want to understand why they buy
some products and what’s their opinion about our
service and our agency. We are interested in their
feedback, we want to know whether they think
we have been nice and kind to them if they are
satisfied and what we need to improve on.
We also use digital analytics to identify trends and
study the competition in our sector, which today is
represented indeed from online businesses. At our
travel agency, forecasting future trends is essenti-
al to deliver a better and more appropriate service.
We want to impress our clients and surprise
them with the best experience.

17. Conclusion
Digital analysis represents an important aspect in businesses today. In the past years,
analysts were only capable of collecting
quantitative data while today, with the massive development of the Internet and new
technologies, it is also possible to collect
qualitative data. The collection and analysis of these data allow business managers to
understand consumers’ behaviour, predict the future trend of the business and specifically improve
the performance if necessary.
On the other hand, consumers also have more access to information than ever before.
Mobile devices and cloud computing represent huge tools that people can access easily today. The internet
with its blogs, forums and social medias allow any users to see and write reviews, comments and share
opinions with all the community.
In our travel agency digital analytics is taken seriously. We have skilled people who work hard to collect data
from current and potential customers who access our website. They analyse those data and give us the
report so that we can understand where we are doing well and where we need to take action and improve our
services and performance.
Our team is able to collect data such as age, sex, nationality, preferences based on likes/comments/retweets
and so on. This helps us to elaborate strategies to individually fit our costumers’ needs, based on the data
that we collect about them, and also to record their activities to deliver a better service in future occasions.
Of course, a 23 year old couple have different needs and preferences than a 65 years old couple and so
on. We have to understand people’s needs and desires and act upon them by creating consciousness and
commitment toward our company.
The objectives we set are for instance: online and offline purchasing, positive feedbacks and reviews from our
clients, high level of engagement and so on. We aim to succeed those objectives and to do so we use digital
analytics outcomes to investigate and study our consumer’s behaviours to understand how we can deliver a
successful service.
We start with measurements and we always improve and enhance our business. Qualitative data are useful
to us because they tell us why consumers act in a certain way. We want to understand why they buy some
products and what’s their opinion about our service and our agency. We are interested in their feedback, we
want to know whether they think we have been nice and kind to them if they are satisfied and what we need
to improve on.
We also use digital analytics to identify trends and study the competition in our sector, which today is
represented indeed from online businesses. At our travel agency, forecasting future trends is essential to
deliver a better and more appropriate service. We want to impress our clients and surprise them with the best
experience.
People can find anything they are looking
for at anytime, anywhere and quickly
3.
Psychology
of netwerking

18. Hello everybody, I am Charlotte, a hotel
manager in Boston and today, I am going to
talk to you about how we use psychology to
connect with our customers online.
We stress the point that we are human beings
and not machines and that every
person is different and needs to be treated dif-
ferently with personalised and specific
services. Using research to understand people’s
needs and desires is our most important missi-
on.
To do so, we use some psychology principles
that helped us to build a community around and
about our hotel. We succeeded to get a high
level of engagement with our people and we are
now able to get their feedbacks, reviews, com-
ments and queries in real time. This also helped
us to create our brand identity and to inform
people about our core beliefs and ethical
approach so that they could be inspired by us
and would let us know what they think.
Principles of persuasion, value creation and
social identity theory form part of our approach
to reflect believes and attitude of our audience.
The brain is built to
change in response to
experience
-Richard Davidson
“Passion is the difference between having a job and having a career.”
33, Married, Chigaco, Outgoing
Hotel manager at The Peninsula Chicago
Persona, Charlotte Jones – Hotel Manager
BIO
Graduated from the New York University, I had a first degree in Business and Finance
followed by a Master in Marketing and Communication at the Chicago University.
I´ve always loved hotels so I love my job and all the responsibilities that derive from it.
I love social media and the fact that we are having the chance to be part of the network
society. I think communication builds the fundament of the everyday life and so it does
for the business. The Internet together with the new technologies help us to have a
better, faster and more efficient communication than ever before. This supports us in
achieving our objectives. Customers are important and so is the understanding of them.
Applying the right strategy to analyse their needs, desires and actions and behaviour is
fundamental for us.
CEO
Expand overseas.
Being listed in Forbes
GOALS
Bad communication
Complains
Poor customer service
FRUSTRATION
Introduction

19. Everything we do at our hotel, which is
tailored for the background we operate in and
the people we address to, is conceived to
persuade consumers and to encourage them to
trust us and to use our services. We want to
know our costumers’ fears and passions to
assure them that, when staying with us, they
don’t have to worry about anything.
Every action behind a brand has a psychological
effect on people’s mind and choices. Persuasion
is an important element for entrepreneurs. It is
useful to get new costumers and to build
quality business connections because
persuasive people are influential and know how
to get the audience. The understanding of our
costumers’ backgrounds and distinctions,
allows us to effectively persuade them and
deliver a good service.
Robert Cialdini is an American professor of
psychology and he has listed and described six
principles of persuasion. Since they are really
interesting and inspirational for our business, I’ll
give you some tips on how vendors could use
them as optimally as possible in the travel
sector.
Principles of influence
Get closer than ever to
your customers. So close,
that yuo could tell them
what they need and wel
Before they realise it
- Steve Jobs
Principle #2: Social Proof
People tend to look to those around them to guide their
decisions and actions, certainly when they’re unsure
about something. I found this example on TripAdvisor
which I think is applicable to this principle: if both hotels
are rated 4/5, but only one of them has the certificate
of excellence, people will assume that it’s better than the
other one.
Principle #3: Commitment and
Consistency
According to Cialdini, we’re more likely to take action after
we’ve agreed to it. How can vendors implement this strategy?
First, asking questions that require a positive answer it’s more
effective. For instance: would you like to go to this incredible
exotic beach? After the reply, start going into details talking
about dates, prices, preferences, etc. because people are more
willing to give you deeper information after they know their
request has been understood.
Second, take advantage of the fact that when people express
a desire or a need, they won’t give up until they don’t get
what they want.
Principle #1: Reciprocation
This means that people, after receiving something, feel
the need to give the favour back. Give a little, take a little.
Provide a positive experience to consumers or gift them
with samples and coupons can be really effective. Indeed,
customers are more likely to tip a waiter if the service has
been a good one.
Tip: start with giving without expecting
a return.
KLM has a handy free service. If you want to know what
the best offer is to travel to a certain place, just send
a tweet to @KLMfares and they will retweet you the
lowest rate. It’s a smart tool that online hotels or travel
agencies could apply to make consumers aware of the
most convenient rate and help them out. One pitfall for
many companies is not paying enough attention to existing
customers. However, the principle of reciprocity can help
to strengthen the relationship with them because it’s
meaningful to give your customers advantages and offers
which are unexpected and personal.
Clickontheplaneforanexample

20. Principle #4: Liking
Cialdini (2001) says “people prefer to say ‘yes’ to those
they know and like”, but also to those who have similarities
with them.
This is a picture posted by Marriott hotels on Instagram.
Olivia Culpo is an American actress, model and television
presenter. She won the 2012 Miss Rhode Island USA
competition and was crowned as Miss Universe 2012
in Las Vegas (Wikipedia, n.d.). Therefore, because of her
popularity, people would refer and inspire to her and it’s
likely that fans and followers would book a room at Marriot
because she was there too.
Principle #5: Authority
If you’re authoritarian you’re trustable in people’s eyes;
just think about doctors, lawyers, police officers, etc.
We would better trust our dentist’s opinion about which
toothbrush to use, rather than the salesman at the shop,
right?
Travel sector example: smart and elegant people look for
specific destinations, hotels, services, etc. which brings
them to the service that is offered by specialised travel
agents. In this case, indeed, the authority is represented
by physical travel agents who know their job and its
relative implications. On the other hand, young people and
backpack travellers, prefer to refer to online websites or
traveller communities to find the best solution that fits
their requirements.
#6: Scarcity
When a product or service are limited edition or there’s just
a small amount in the market, people want it immediately.
Examples are: “Don’t miss this chance…”, “Here’s what
you’ll miss out on…” (Polanski, n.d.).
Tip: point out the unique things about your business and
tell consumers what they’re going to lose if they don’t
take advantage of the offer.
This is an example from www.booking.com where
marketers try to convince people to book the room, giving
the feeling that maybe the day after the hotel will be fully
booked.
#7: Unity
This principle tries to persuade people to come along in
your idea. How? Means to pursue this principle are for
example referring to family or stimulating co-creation and
letting customers make part of your product.
Airbnb created the short movie “Hollywoord & Vines”,
the first film that was directed via Twitter. It’s a global
experiment made by 100 Viners from all over the world.
For four days long, people have worked together with the
director to become this final result: a story about traveling,
adventure and finding your place in this world.
Social Identity theory
Today people, more than ever before, need and
want to connect to each other and belong to a
community. To understand why customers use
online tools to book their holidays, and why
they want to share travel experiences, we need
to understand that social media is people’s
media (Fournier & Avery, 2010). There are
several theories out there that explain why
people engage in a community.
The first one is the ‘Hierarchy of Psychological
Needs’ by Maslow, shown in the picture below,
where five needs are listed and linked to each
other. We consider the third, fourth and fifth
needs to point out the main reasons why an
individual needs and wants to become part of a
network.
Social Media is more
about sociology and
psychology than
technology.
- Brian Solis
Another theory explains that people connect to
social networks because of 4 different reasons
(Hassels Mönning, 2012):
1. Common Divisor: Similarities push people to
connect and share experiences.
2. Altruism: Sharing knowledge and experience
without expecting
anything in return give us a positive feeling.
3. Hedonism: Social Media is not only
informative, it is also fun and
entertaining.
4. Tribalism: Society can be divided into many
smaller groups,
communities, where people feel safe and strong.
The Uses and Gratifications Theory, which
was used for research purposes in the student
environment by Park, Kerk and Valenzuela
(2009), explains that people want to belong
to a network to: socialise, entertain, inform,
and seek self-status, that is the pursuing of
prestige, honour and respect in society.
We can now say that people have two main
reasons to become part of a network, these
are the need to belong and the self-concept.
The question Who am I? is the main one to
consider. Indeed, the self-concept, integrated
by Maslow in his hierarchy, refers to a person’s
need to be respected and confident and.
He points out that every person seeks for
connections such as family, friendships or
partnerships because belonging fulfil us.
Needs of Maslow..

21. AccordingtoHasslesMönningstribalismaffirms
that one person alone is not feeling strong enough
to cope with life’s challenges because people
struggle more with being alone rather than in a
group, where they are supported and safe.
Finally, from the point of view of the Uses and
Gratifications Theory, it’s all about ‘socialising’
and ‘self-status seeking’ where these can be
related to the discovery of a person’s self and
the willingness to share with other people. We
understand that the feeling of belongingness
gives us a “sense of social identity: a sense of
belonging to the social world” (McLeod, 2008).
These theories are highly important for the
travel sector because everybody today loves to
socialise and connect with people who have the
same interests. Travellers are looking forward to
meet people online who are willing to share their
information and experiences, to be able to learn
from others’ mistakes and benefits. During this
learning process, not only the person who gets
more additional information is happier in the end,
but also the person who share his experience
and who’s able to help another person, will gain
a positive feeling. Social media not only allows
travellers to get the information they’re looking
for, but also to entertain themselves, to watch
videos and see beautiful pictures of places where
they once might go or to exchange their stories
and explore other’s journeys.
People who belong to a social media community
feel safer and stronger knowing they are part
of the whole network. If they have doubts or
questions, they just get in contact with the
members of their community to seek help.
People working in the travel industry need to
be aware that people now prefer to engage in
networks because of all these benefits. It is really
necessary to take advantage of the knowledge
that the internet can provide us about people’s
needs and wishes to enhance businesses and
performances. Travel agencies should create
communities and stimulate travellers to share
experiences and ideas but also, they need to
filter customers’ wishes and needs to provide a
better service and be finally closer to the m. It’s
time to quit with the written travel guides and to
join an interactive communication in the web.
A brand is how someone
thinks and feels about your
company and is based on
the sum of interactions they
have with your business. -
Richard Lazzera
Social Identity theory
Understood that human beings feel the need to
participate in a trustworthy environment where
they are free to share desires and interests with
other similar people. Let’s investigate on how
brands can create communities to link people
who share the same views and opinions. Of
course, many brands have already created and
aim to create this phenomenon which is broadly
spread online, on platforms such as social media.
It is very interesting to understand why people
want to engage with their favourite brand and
how this influences their behaviour in the process
of decision makings like purchases or online
shopping.
We said, one of the reasons people want to join
a community is to identify themselves within it.
Brand communities allow consumers to get
insights about companies: their core beliefs,
actions, plans, ethics etc. When people identify
themselves with a brand strategy or statement,
then they’re likely to be loyal to that company
and to go online, offering reviews and shares.
There are three traditional indicators of a brand
community:sharedconsciousness,sharedrituals,
traditions and obligations to society. These all
have to do with people feeling connected and
belonging to a group where they feel suitable in.
When people share the same opinions or ideas
regarding products or brands, they feel like they
know each other even though they have never
met before. This is also good for brand loyalty
because costumers support and motivate each
other by sharing their experiences, influencing
and persuading others to do the same.
Conciousness,
rituals&traditions and
obligations to society

22. https://ndigit.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/sharing-content-using-emotion.jpg
There are three traditional indicators of a brand
community:sharedconsciousness,sharedrituals,
traditions and obligations to society. These all
have to do with people feeling connected and
belonging to a group where they feel suitable in.
When people share the same opinions or ideas
regarding products or brands, they feel like they
know each other even though they have never
met before. This is also good for brand loyalty
because costumers support and motivate each
other by sharing their experiences, influencing
and persuading others to do the same.
Brands use communities to interact with their
customers and to show their interest towards
their opinions, reviews, comments and so on.
Managers and CEOs want to know people’s
needsanddesiretofulfilthembeforeexpectations.
Doing so, products and services can be provided
based on what people really want and this gives
more value to brands (Boudali & Laabidi, 2016).
Except for attracting new customers, companies
need to retain old ones and to make a high
profit. vTo do that, and inspire consumers to buy
products, brands have to appeal people.
Except for attracting new customers, companies
need to retain old ones and to make a high
profit. vTo do that, and inspire consumers to
buy products, brands have to appeal people. For
example, if from your community or website you
understand that your customers are involved
and like ethical stuff, then you should adapt to it
and give proof of that; make public that you are
transparent with that, that your company has
ethical principles to apply to each project.
At our hotel, it is our aim to provide the best
service and a pleasant experience to all our
visitors. As I said at the beginning of the chapter,
building an online community is, of course, a big
part of our strategy. It is easy and useful for
our customers to disseminate information like the
history and the culture of our brand. We use it to
give personal assistance to consumers but also
to monitor and influence members’ behaviour.
Anyway, the problem we face is the competition.
Since it is low in cost and high in communication
efficiency, almost every brand is focused on
trying to build a successful community (Laroche,
Habibi, Richard, & Sankaranarayanan, 2012).
In the following best practice, you can see how to
apply the theories we have been discussing in this
chapter and how to apply some of the principles
of influence. For example, for the reciprocation
principle, Hilton Hotel gives their loyal customers
something extra so they are more willing to use
the service again. Fifty-five million people are
part of this community and this can be the social
proof that Hilton is a popular business providing
quality. For the liking principle, because of the
online and offline popularity of the hotel and the
fact that many celebrities check in and post it
on Facebook or Instagram, people are inspired
and influenced to book their room too. These
factors give people the feeling that they can trust
(authority) the hotel and the brand.
From this example we can understand that
communities give value to both parts, members
and brand. It’s all about getting to know each
other to make customer’s experience better
and the brand more esteemed. Understanding
and react to your audience’s needs and offer
something special will create brand loyalty and
value.
It’s a challenge out there, but how
can you differentiate your brand
from others?

23. Only on Facebook, Hilton has around 1.5 million likes but
also a high reach on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. Hilton is a good
example of a brand that connect and engage with its consumers online. Indeed, the
company created the Hilton Honors program, that is about partnerships with airlines,
credit cards and retailers to provide many different ways to earn points on everyday
consumer’s purchase. Loyal members can use these points for many things such as
booking or upgrading a room with this promise: ‘HHonors members enjoy the fastest track
to elite status - and all the privileges that come with it’ (Hilton, 2015). This is a clear
example of a brand that created value for its loyal customers to make them feel special.
Weak Signal
In a world where people are more technological than ever before and willing
to take advantage of it to make progresses, Hotels need to be up to date and
innovative too. For example, at the CitizenM Hotel in Rotterdam (https://
www.citizenm.com/destinations/rotterdam/rotterdam-hotel) everything is
trendy, updated and can be managed from an iPad: lights, curtains, music,
TV, radio, etc. Arriving at the hotel you can see there is no more a traditional
reception, but a desk with 4 computers and a person to welcome you.
This employee will help you to self check-in in your room using one of the
computers made available by the hotel. Once in your room, with an iPad they
provide to you, everything can be controlled and personalised.

24. After this chapter, I hope it will be clear why
some psychology principles are essential
to businesses. Without persuasion and
the implementation of the six principles of
influence, business and brands wouldn’t be
able to engage in an effective way with their
customers and this would represent a negative
aspect. The right message, campaign, website,
logo, image, video etc. represent powerful tools
and company features that invite people to
engage and participate in brands communities.
Being transparent is the most important thing
for people and when they will feel integrated
and mirrored in your brand community and
company’s beliefs and cores, they will be loyal
to the company.
We said there are three theories that explain
why people engage in social communities and
the self-actualization is the most important
common element within. We use those principles
to understand how to attract and retain custo-
Conclusion mers and also what skills and effective tools to
use in order to deliver a good service.
The internet, with its social media platforms,
blogs, communities, forums etc. has completely
changed the way people interact and
communicate, but also how they engage with
business and sales. People are now more aware
and have more information than ever before
regarding the world around them. Managers,
CEOs and owners have to be careful of which
strategy to use and especially the best way to
deliver it, in order to raise public awareness and
consensus. In this way, both the parties will be
satisfied.
“I’m in charge of
thinking of things
before people know
they need them”.
- John Harris
4.
Stakeholder
engagement and
influencer marketing

25. In the human network brands are the result of
shared experiences (Solis, 2011).
Seizing this citation of Brian Solis from
the year 2013, I would like to outline the
importance of the experiences people are
making with your brand. Solis´ words point out
that the image and identity of a brand is mainly
defined by the crowd and their experiences with
it.
According to an article in McKinsey Quarterly,
Consumers are moving outside the marketing
funnel by changing the way they research and
buy products (Court, Elzinga, Mulder & Vetvik,
2009).
This statement can be underlined by the
result of a research carried out by Court,
Elzinga, Mulder & Vetvik in 2009. They
found out that in today´s decision-making
journey, consumer-driven marketing becomes
increasingly popular. Talking about the brand
consideration, two-thirds of the touch points
during the active-evaluation phase (which
means the information gathering with regard
to all the brands) involve consumer-driven
marketing activities like word-of-mouth
recommendations, Internet reviews and a
recollection of past experiences. This means
that the brand is defined to two-thirds by
peers and previous experiences. Surprisingly,
only one-third of the touch points involves
company-driven marketing like sponsorship,
traditional advertising or direct marketing.
In the following chapter, I am going to explain
the required basic knowledge to be finally
able to define how you as a communication
expert can engage with stakeholders who are
part of a social network and how you can
react to that change in their decision-making
journey.
“Stakeholder engagement is a never-ending process. We have to continually earn
Stakeholders´ confidence. It is a relationship.”
36, Married, San Fransisco,
resultfocused
Social Media Coordinator, motivated. social
Persona, Sabrina Clark - Social media coordinator
BIO
I have graduated in 2002 after studying Business communication Management at university. To
get a huge knowledge about the travel sector and everything that has to do with Social Media I did
several internships in huge companies like Expedia Inc., TUI, Facebook and Brandwatch.
As Social Media definitely is the new way of interacting and communicating with the clients, I
needed to extend my knowledge. Therefore, I did an advanced vocational training to be finally at
the position where I am today. I am the Social Media Coordinator of a big travel agency called
Booking.com.
My aim is to engage with stakeholders in the most successful way possible, to finally make them
identify with the brand, build trust and level up concerning their engagement ratio.
Engaging with stakeholders
Develop strategies
Building trust
GOALS
Losing trust of clients
Unsuccesfull relationships
FRUSTRATION
Introduction

26. To base the following knowledge on theoretical
facts, I would like to start with explaining two
theories to you, building the fundament of your
know-how.
Engaging with stakeholders is a priority for
any business. Stakeholders are all those people
who, somehow, influence a business or a brand.
These can be employees, creditors, directors
and suppliers for example. In other terms,
and especially referring to the travel sector,
stakeholders are CEOs, managers, businesses
like Booking.com and Airbnb, airlines, museums,
transport organisations any many more.
Therefore, having a good and lasting relationship
with them is auspicious for every business to
perform and deliver an optimal service. Today it
is easier than ever before to engage and stay in
contact with them. The advent of social media
and the rapidity of the internet make it easier and
more efficient to keep and monitor relationships
with stakeholders.
For example, in the field of social media
coordination, people who engage with our
platforms are brands and users. Brands pay us
to post their contents that as a result, through
our channel, they can access our community and
sponsor their products. Thus, as George Moschis
and Gilbert A. Churchill (1978) state, people get
information and are consequently influenced by
what surrounds them like peers, family, friends,
school and many other. For this reason, people
are learning about consumer behaviour since they
are teenagers or even children. Let’s just think
about the association that kids have towards toy
shops and their attitude for pocket money.
Back in the Fifty’s, the social psychologist Leon
Festinger(1954)proposedtheSocialComparison
Theory which explains that humans are driven
to come together with other people to compare
opinions and exchange ideas. Thus, since people
are different from each other and have different
tastes, they prefer to come together with similar
people or people who share the same interests.
These community-groups where people interact
and share their common interests were seen as
reference groups by Festinger. It is fundamental to
understand the link between the group members
and their use and conception of the brand.
This theory is useful for a marketing purpose,
for example, to obtain advantages above the
competition.
Let’s say that the reference group is our firm
and people that surround us gather to talk about
our service and our performance. For what
concerns the social media field, it is evident that
with the ease of today´s communication, the
more costumers talk and exchange ideas about
the products or services on online platforms, the
more brands can influence those people and their
decisions thanks to the feedbacks they gain on
the public. Likewise, the more involved a consumer
is with the brand, the more connection there is
in-between and this brings the consumer to seek
more information and eventually, the purchase is
more likely to happen. This is also considered as
being highly important because when a business
performswellandhasnoproblemswithcustomers,
stakeholders appreciate this aspect.
One-two-step

27. Firstly, you try to understand where they
got the information from, then you try to
understand this information and finally, you try
to influence them in either changing their minds
if they are having a wrong view, or we are
trying to consolidate it. As already said at the
beginning of the paragraph, your main goal is to
attract new stakeholders and especially to keep
the old ones. Therefore, it is fundamental to
us communication experts to understand their
views and opinions and it is our role to lead
them like opinion leaders. The main goal should
be to convince the suppliers and customers of
your business being ethical and ecological in
order to keep them satisfied and happy with
your core beliefs and make your suppliers willing
and available to work and engage with you.
Your role is to guide people around your
business, influence their behaviours and
especially their decision-making process.
Persuading them to use and talk about your
services as they are the best in the market, is
also part of your task. Your aim should be to
correct the negative view stakeholders might
have on your brand, which is maybe given by
some media channel or person. Indeed, basing
your actions on the Two-step Flow theory
and the consumer socialisation, help you to
understand the customers’ actions and also to
understand where they get all the information
from.
Another useful theory that can be also related
to the field of social media, is the Two-step
Flow theory which was first introduced by
Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson and Hazel
(1944) and which explains how mass media
influences people’s decision-making process
and behaviour. From this theory we learn that
people in their everyday lives are always being
informed and influenced by media messages.
The information that we get from the TV,
radio and many other channels, is filtered by
other components that influence our lives. For
example, we do not only rely on what we hear
from the media as we are social animals and
therefore need to share our opinions and ideas
with other people. This is why we also rely on
the so-called opinion leaders who are people
able to affect the public belief either serving
as channels for news or covering the role of
social influencers. Thus, once the message has
been delivered, their role is to create awareness
about it.
As reported by Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld
(1955), this theory also explains to us that
there are different associations of people and of
course each of them has different preferences.
Similar people have more power to influence
likewise people who are sharing the same
interests, age, ethnicity or language. As a result,
opinion leaders are likely to influence those,
similar to them in tastes. Their main function
is to modify or change consumers’ behaviours
and attitudes. From every message that we get,
somehow, we are influenced on a personal level,
that means that every information coming from
the media implies a reaction by the consumers.
I am also going to dive a bit deeper in this
talking about peer influence later. This is
when the Two-step Flow theory helped out
researchers because it made clearer to realise
how media influences the public opinion but also
to forecast the impact that media messages
have on the audience.
Traditional media
I am now going to show you how these theories
can be used for practice purposes. Thinking
about the travel sector and all the innovations
around it, I would like to let you know that our
stakeholders can get the information they are
looking for anywhere - offline and online- like
in blogs, forums, social media and YouTube
channels. Your role is to guide the stakeholders
to the right information channel and the right
information about your business.

28. Good and trustworthy relationships are
fundamental to make a business grow and
expand. Therefore, we want the people to talk
about us and to influence each other. This
process today is also made possible thanks
to social medias like Facebook and Instagram
which make everything faster, more connected
and more shareable. It is now possible to
reach and engage with people all over the
world instantly. Moreover, it is possible to
get feedback from them in a thousands
ways. Facebook, for example, gives the
opportunity to express anger, love, happiness
etc. about anything someone posts. Us being
communication experts, try to analyse these
reactions and as a consequence, we make
plans and forecast future decisions and events.
Peer influence
Now, I would like to get a bit more practical,
talking about the peer influence. A person can
be influenced in many different ways. It all
starts with their parents and people who stand
close to that person since he was born. This
person believes in everything they say, because,
that’s all he knows till then. This can be seen as
a way of influencing due to a certain ‘authority’.
Growing up and meeting other people of
similar age, gives the people other insights.
Communicating and spending time with friends
will influence a kid and may change the way of
thinking and behaving. Some kids are very shy,
never dare to try anything new. In this case, a
friend who acts the total opposite can influence
him in a positive way. He can help him explore
things and be more social. But on the other
side, peer influence can also be negative. It
might get him into trouble if his friends let him
do risky things or breaking the rules.
He would never do that on his own but he
still chooses to do so, because of the need to
belong to a group. Actually, at some point a
person decides where he wants to belong to
and adapts the behaviour of this group to feel
accepted and valued. This is what is called
peer influence. Some ‘peers’ make each other
better, some drag each other down. The most
important thing is that you find a way of fitting
into a group, by being yourself
(raisingchildren, 2015).
He would never do that on his own but he
still chooses to do so, because of the need to
belong to a group. Actually, at some point a
person decides where he wants to belong to
and adapts the behaviour of this group to feel
accepted and valued. This is what is called
peer influence. Some ‘peers’ make each other
better, some drag each other down. The most
important thing is that you find a way of fitting
into a group, by being yourself
(raisingchildren, 2015).
The willingness and need of belonging to a
group can also be related to the Social Identity
Theory, I talked about in the 3rd chapter
(Lindsey, a hyperlink would
be nice here ☺). We learned that the
Social identity is the person’s sense of who
he is, based on his group membership. The
belongingness to a group portrays an important
source of pride and self-esteem as it gives us a
sense of social identity: a sense of belonging to
the social world (McLeod, 2008).
Social media has become a big part of our
lives nowadays. Kids are growing up in such a
different environment than I did. They live in a
world where communication can take place at
any time with the help of their smartphones,
which they carry with them all day. Peer
influence is not only defined by the face-to-
face-conversation anymore. It has become
an online experience, which they can’t avoid.
Young adults don’t even realize that they are
a victim of peer influence, as it has become a
social ‘thing’ where people are searching for
acceptance.
Acceptance by showing off ‘online’ (Levey,
2016).
Talking about the travel sector, I think the ‘need
to show off’ or just the ‘need to share’ has
changed a lot too, due to social media channels
and the connectedness of the world. Of course,
it is fun to see what your family, friends or your
idols are up to.
But what concerns the travel industry, it is
really interesting to know that the power of
visual User Generated Content (USC) as a
marketing tool is growing day by day. This
means that consumers are creating content
and influencing each other through social
media channels, online communities, blogs,
vlogs etc. permanently. In the travel industry,
peer influence is not only happening between
people of similar age but between all the people
sharing their interests (Olapic, 2016).

29. The travel industry is huge. It is worth 8 trillion
dollars and is forecast to grow another 50%
by 2025. It generates 10% of the world’s
GDP and has more to gain from the visual USC
than any other industry. Travel agencies, hotels
and any travel brand should make use of this
UGC to showcase the overwhelmingly positive
experiential and emotional elements that define
the travel experience.
Collecting the relevant photo’s, videos and
reviews about an experience and showing this
on your own website or social platforms will
help to keep the visitors there to finally book
their vacation. The best thing to do is to create
forums where people are invited to tell their
story and to upload photos to show fast and
free, their personal content which is relevant
and of high quality. Another positive thing about
USC is that it also engages new customers and
reduces the costs of creating content for the
companies (Olapic, 2016).
Keeping this in mind, you should really be
influenced adapting to these changes in the
costumer-decision-journey and showing your
costumers the content others already created
for you, as 8 out of 10 customers are booking
their trip online.
Touchpoints
It hasn’t been a long time that the average
travelers relied on a single touchpoint when
planning their trips: their trusted travel agent.
Nowadays, online travel shopping has become
the norm for leisure travel planning. Travelers
plan their trips across multiple channels and
consult a wide range of sites via desktop
and mobile devices, that as a result, they get
a holistic picture of their trips (see figure 1).
But it doesn’t end with the booking. Travelers
continue to engage in post-booking activities
during their trips (via recommendations) and
when they return home as well (by sharing
through social media, blogs and other channels).
I just read that already 72% of the consumers
post photos on a social network while they are
on vacation. 76% of them are posting their
content after they return. This fact needs to be
faced knowing that Instagram has 400 million
active users that are posting 80 million photos
per day and knowing that 350 million photos
are uploaded daily on Facebook (Olapic, 2016).
Therefore, the challenge for marketers is to
engage travelers before, during and after their
trips (Juman & Gasdia, 2014).
But it doesn’t end with the booking. Travelers
continue to engage in post-booking activities
during their trips (via recommendations) and
when they return home as well (by sharing
through social media, blogs and other channels).
I just read that already 72% of the consumers
post photos on a social network while they are
on vacation. 76% of them are posting their
content after they return. This fact needs to be
faced knowing that Instagram has 400 million
active users that are posting 80 million photos
per day and knowing that 350 million photos
are uploaded daily on Facebook (Olapic, 2016).
Therefore, the challenge for marketers is to
engage travelers before, during and after their
trips (Juman & Gasdia, 2014).
In the past several years, a lot of social travel
sites have been trying to draw the attention of
the traveler. Despite the presence of big players
such as Expedia and Priceline, various new
social travel sites have managed to attract a
large audience. I am going to explain you some
trends and tips which are incorporated by the
newest social travel sites and that are useful to
obtain a high amount of engaged users.
Mobile optimalization
We live in a mobile-first world when it comes to
digital solutions. Especially the travel sector has
been transformed by the rise of smartphones
and tablets. This means travel suppliers should
develop their booking, customer service and
all the other experiences with a mobile-first
mentality.

30. Create a recommendation culture
We live in a mobile-first world when it comes to
digital solutions. Especially the travel sector has
been transformed by the rise of smartphones
and tablets. This means travel suppliers should
develop their booking, customer service and
all the other experiences with a mobile-first
mentality.
Marketers can implement an online review
program to ensure that travelers have a way
to share experiences. Sites like Gogobot and
Tripbird contain places based on advice from
the consumer’s network of Facebook friends.
Therefore, the consumers get the possibility
to learn more about a specific resort or travel
destination and for travel marketers the data
can present an opportunity to get to know the
customers´ behaviour and to better engage with
current and future customers. Furthermore,
as a travel marketer you need to refocus
on reviews. Encourage positive sharing and
optimize experiences. They are extremely
important because the personalized data tells
us more about the customer, its behaviour and
how a customer plans its vacation. According
to a poll of consumers, positive reviews are the
second-most likely factor to influence a holiday
purchase (MDGadvertising, 2016). It turned
out that 60% of travellers say that online
reviews are influential if it comes to travel
choices and 54% state that online photos and
videos shape their opinions (Wenner, 2016).
Communities based around products
We live in a mobile-first world when it comes to
digital solutions. Especially the travel sector has
been transformed by the rise of smartphones
and tablets. This means travel suppliers should
develop their booking, customer service and
all the other experiences with a mobile-first
mentality.
I am talking about platforms where both,
travelers and suppliers, are brought together to
engage travelers (consumers) with a product.
Sites like Couchsurfing and Tripping bring
users together that would like to share rooms
during their journey. Other commercial sites
like Airbnb contain users who rent their room
to earn money with it. The latest entrants
within this trend are inbed.me that brings users
together who are staying in the same hostel
and Touristlink which aims for members who
are interested in group travel experiences.
The objective is to develop a more in-depth
understanding of a community of interest. The
understanding in a community profile can lead
to more effectiveness as they are tailored to the
needs of the people involved and can be helpful
while developing your community engagement
strategy (Laidlaw, 2015).
Make way for the Millenials
Millenials are the rising new type of travelers.
According to Harvard Business Review,
Millennials will be the dominant demographic
in the global workforce in just four years. The
group now represents 40% of leisure travelers
who book online. What makes them so unique?
They want their hotel to know their preferences
before they arrive, and want to see personalized
recommendations sent to them. New technology
such as InGuest is making it easier to engage
the Millenial traveller. As guests engage with
hotel staff via the mobile web/app, InGuest
collects interests and data to build rich
guest profiles. These guest profiles make it
possible for the hotel staff to start targeted
communications that drive conversion (Revinate
& Skift, 2014).
Communities based around products
Recognize that a customer’s journey is unique
and moves between multiple channels and
touchpoints. Each customer is different so
embrace the customer journey and identity and
try to learn their key touchpoints and how they
use them. Factors such as age, income, travel
frequency, use of technology can all influence
the specific touchpoints they experience,
and at which point in the travel planning
process. Analytics can help travel maketers
to understand and connect visitor’s behaviour
across channels (Juman & Gasdia, 2014).

31. To come up with a best practise example that matches these customers´ expectations, I
decided to take a closer look at the company I am working for - booking.com. Not only
that booking.com won the World travel awards in the last years in the categories Europe’s
Leading Online Travel Agency and World’s Leading Online Travel Agency Website,
they also manage to establish new ideas to engage with their customers in new ways,
each year. Booking.com is selling hotel rooms that are matching the preferences of the
customers on what they would like to do, not just on where they would like to go.
This year for example, booking.com introduced a new feature called Passion Search which
gives destination recommendations based on activities and interests of the customer
(Aquino, 2016).
Moreover, they have launched another free online customer engagement tool, the
‘Resolution Translator’. With the help of the advertising agency, Weiden + Kennedy
Amsterdam, booking.com designed the ´Resolution Translator´ to help its´ customers to
discover new destinations for New Year. Booking.com wants the people to turn their
most likely doomed plans for the future into real reservations. After entering the personal
resolution for New Year, the tool comes up a with a unique translated resolution that
combines personal preferences with travel ideas. The personalised result is then sharable
across the users’ social channels. Therefore, the network of the customer is able to talk
about it. The chief marketing officer of booking.com, Pepijn Rijvers, said: “At Booking.
com, we want to go beyond the ordinary and our Resolution Translator is just one way
in which we are leveraging the power of technology to help people experience the world
(Williams, 2016).”
To mention a weak signal in the travel industry, I discovered a trend that is currently to
be about establishing itself. More and more brands, even the smaller ones are increasingly
using consumer-generated images to offer more authentic content and to display more
guest-centric experiences.
As a result, the engagement and the direct bookings are increasing. The use of user
generated content in form of videos, images and journals are keeping the possible future
costumers on the brand´s site instead of forcing them to look for more visual evidences.
Offering digital and physical experiences that keeps the costumers coming back to the
brand, builds a long-term relationship based on trust and costumer´s loyalty.
Another weak signal is the development of the mentioned idea above. Till now only a few
hotel chains are placing user generated content additionally on almost every page of the
booking experience, starting with the homepage and ending with the confirmation page.
In this case, user generated content is increasingly used to influence the new customers
during their decision-journey, not only while surfing on the website and looking for visual
evidences about their possible dream holidays.

32. I would like to add another Best Practise
Example created by the Hotel Chain Marriott.
This Best Practise concentrates more on the
use of user generated content and shows
another approach talking about stakeholder
engagement that was never created in that
way before. Marriott managed to establish a
content game that was called #TravelBrilliantly
in 2015, partnering with GoPro. They asked
their guests to create quality content by
giving them a GoPro in Marriott resorts in
Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
The guests were asked to share their travel
experiences with the hashtag #TravelBrilliantly.
Their videos and therefore, the user generated
content, was uploaded on the campaign´s
Conclusion
Keeping all these facts in mind I just told you,
one can say that to engage effectively with
stakeholders that are part of a network, you
need to build up trust to finally earn their
loyalty towards your brand. Therefore, you need
to get to know your customers as individuals
and engage with them with the help of learning
what they really like and then, permanently
deliver that.
With using, sharing and re-graming your
customers´ content (in a separate gallery for
example, or on your social media channel), you
are showing that you recognize and appreciate
what they are associating with your brand.
This does not only build up trust and loyalty,
but also future engagement. Another secret to
a successful engagement with the stakeholders
can be the placing of user generated content on
almost every page of the booking experience.
Then, the UGC can be used to help new
customers make purchase decisions
(Olapic, 2016).
Frederic Gonzalo, founder of Gonzo Marketing
stated the following: Photos and videos are a
way to set your brand apart, because visual
user-generated content (UGC) has much more
perceived authenticity, and perception is reality.
Of course, you can have a fantastic, highly
produced content roll-out on social media, but
when it’s OPC (other people’s content), it has
that extra layer of authenticity and legitimacy
which is imperative to engaging travellers
(Olapic, 2016). And for what we just learned:
Peers and people´s previous experiences define
the brand to two-thirds and as the power of
word-of-mouth recommendations is one of the
most credible forms of information available
today, we need to primary focus on customer
retention and loyalty instead of purely focussing
on advertising (Evans, 2015).
website, along with links to book your stay.
The user generated content in form of videos
made by other travellers was used to help new
customers making purchase decisions. Marriott
managed to connect the online world with the
physical location of their services and therefore,
interacted with their possible future customers
on a new level. The new customers were
invited to learn and get inspired from previous
customers.

33. 5.
The art of
listening
“The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best but
legendary.”
38, Married, Berlin, Communicative
Customer service Manager, flexibel,
responsible
Persona, Leonard Campo – Customer Service Manager
BIO
For the last five years, I am working as a customer service manager at Trivago. My job is to
coordinate my team and to deal with customers in the best way possible.
I love my job because communication and understanding are the most important elements for all
the relationships, also in business.
For the last five years, I am working as a customer service manager at Trivago. My job is to
coordinate my team and to deal with customers in the best way possible.
I love my job because communication and understanding are the most important elements for all
the relationships, also in business.
of a big travel agency called Booking.com.
My aim is to engage with stakeholders in the most successful way possible, to finally make them
identify with the brand, build trust and level up concerning their engagement ratio.
Total online- offline engagement
100% positive customer feedback
Total understanding and listening
customer problems
GOALS
High level competition
Negative feedback
FRUSTRATION

34. Good listeners are a target audience where
companies usually lose sight of because they
don’t really have a clear idea what it really
involves or how to go about doing it. Although
the listeners seem not to contribute, they are in
a very distinctive way leading organizations to a
successful status and that’s what organization
must start to realise. Most companies get the
importance of listening but only a few of them
know how to go about doing it. Nowadays
customers expect two-way brand relationships
WOW! You just woke up realizing you forgot
to set the alarm. You truly need to hurry;
otherwise you’re going to be late for work. You
arrived at the office just in time and you walk
into the elevator. Right before the door closes
another man runs in. He doesn’t look up from
his phone and pushes a button. The elevator
moves a bit, but 2 seconds later it stops again.
The lights go off and you hear some noise.
Conversation management
By providing each of us
with an enormous need
to be heard, our egos
overwhelm any desire to
hear.
- Kevin J. Murphy
A kind woman voice tells there is something
wrong, it’s going to be fine but it can last for
30 minutes. The first thing you do is grabbing
your phone but the battery died. You look up to
the other man and see that his phone died too.
HELP! What to do? Do I actually need to start
a conversation? With a stranger? Do people
still know how to manage a conversation?
Well, our smartphones make it possible to
be extremely social ONLINE, but OFFLINE
we aren’t. How can you lead a successful
conversation online if you can’t even do it in
the real world? Let’s remind some conversation
principles:
The first thing you can do is introducing
yourself. It is important to know who you
are talking with because this will feel more
trustful. The next thing you can do is ask a
and authentic conversations. However, the
only solution to make those things possible is
to make listening an integral part of the way
you do business (Sharkey, 2012). I will explain
some perspectives of how organizations can
listen actively to their stakeholders. Furthermore,
I will give you tips on how you can improve this
skill. You will soon find out what the benefits
are.
simple question. It is possible that you are
getting a simple answer and the conversation
stops again. To maintain a conversation you
ask another question which is more open. Use
your eyes. Maybe the other person is wearing
a sport shirt from your favorite soccer club.
Something you have in common!
Commonality builds rapport and rapport helps
keep a conversation going. The most important
thing to do is that you listen carefully and
make sure you understand everything the
other person says. Besides the ‘talking skills’,
body language is a big part of a face-to-face
conversation. Don’t cross your arms and look
down to the floor. Look each other in the eye,
use your body while talking and you’ll get more
out of this conversation (study.com, 2015).
Introduction

35. Online conversations are a lot different but
the main principles are the same. You can’t
see any body language so you need to be
aware of how you communicate without any
misunderstandings. Good conversations are a
business opportunity. Organizations or brands
should introduce themselves and be open and
clear about who they are and what they’re
doing. Then they should ask questions about
what stakeholders expect or would like to see.
Listen and understand but most of all, use this
information to improve yourself. Companies
who go for excellent client service and want to
reach ultimate client satisfaction by listening are
called: conversation companies.
A crucial part of such company is that the
culture, mission and vision need to be crystal
clear to all employees. They need to become
one with the company and talk positive and
proudly about it. If you begin intern, you will win
extern! If all employees are on the same line
this will help create engagement.
The Airport Fast Park at Baltimore Washington
International Airport is inspiring because they
make it their business to add ease to the
customer experience for travelers. When you
enter the lot, you are immediately greeted by
an attendant who escorts you to an available
parking spot. The shuttle then meets you at
your car and the driver helps load your luggage
– even with an umbrella if necessary! This
definitely has impacted the customer experience
for air travelers. Don’t just take our word for
it, go on and peruse the 4 and 5 star ratings
they have on Yelp.
See, happy customers do share (Frumkin,
2016).
A company can get a conversation started just
by exceeding client’s expectations. If you give
just a little more service than your competitors
do, there is already something happening
(Vermolen, 2016).
The best possible promotion you can think of:
positive word of mouth.
Talk about low-effort / high-impact! You see,
creating client experiences doesn’t have to cost
you anything, as long as you act on the values you
represent as a brand.