Rob Torres: Google's Travel Industry Director

An article featuring interesting travel marketing advice from Rob Torres, Google's travel industry director:

The other part of being online all the time is adding a social community to your site so that people can communicate with other travelers any time they want.

"In the past, people relied on family and friends for recommendations," said Torres.

"Now, people have this alternative place to go...and more and more customers are relying on customer reviews and social media to actually make their decisions.

"They're relying on social networks of like-minded people to find out what they like and where they should go."
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In addition to social networking, offering travel videos is another way of both engaging potential customers on your site and allowing them to do their own research.

Torres said, "If you think about travel, it's really experiential. What better way to actually experience travel, without being there, before you go than by video?

"Allowing others to upload their own videos and share so customers can see the commonality (i.e. this person is just like me and look what they did) - it's really going to become a core part of the travel marketer's plan."

Currently, Torres said he thinks the travel industry, including travel agents, "are missing out on this video bonanza."

YouTube, he pointed, out is the sixth most visited Web site on the Internet, and MySpace's video site is growing rapidly. Those sites are where agents' potential clients are going.

He suggested that travel agents take a closer look at YouTube. The site, owned by Google, allows users to set up a channel whereby they can aggregate user-generated videos and decide which ones they want associated with their Web site. In this way, "you let your customers produce them [travel videos] and there's no cost to you."
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"If you're trying to acquire more customers, don't just pay attention to the head of the tail [i.e. the large sites or search engines]. You can become more effective and sometimes more cost efficient by looking at this long tail."

What this means for travel agents is that rather than posting a profile on MySpace, an agent would be better off creating a profile on a Web site dedicated to that agent's specialty.

For example, an agent who puts together dive vacations should create a profile on dive Web sites.

The full article is on traveltrade.com