Social Selling - Myth or Reality?
A number of recent hospitality industry articles heralded social selling as if it were some new phenomenon.
Social selling has existed for 20 years now, so this is not a new or unique marketing initiative. After 20 years of trying hard to turn social media into a distribution channel, it still remains an important touch point, but just one of the touch points in the Dreaming and Planning Phases of the Digital Customer Journey.
We argued extensively this same topic back in 2005. And in 2008. And every year after that. For 20 years at my company BestGuest (now part of Cendyn) we added booking links and widgets to the social media profiles of our 5,000 plus hotel clients. We had exclusive “Social Media Only” promotions. We had dedicated social media content creators. We had paid social media campaigns for all our clients. We tracked averything coming from social media - clicks and referrals- using Omniture/Adobe Analytics. The result? Only a trickle of bookings.
So there is nothing new and innovative in social selling.
Guess what percentage of hotel bookings come from social selling today?
50%? 30%? 20%? 10%? 5%?
Nah, 0.05%! Yes, less than 1%!
Social media affects and influences travel planning, no doubt about it. But so do the search engines. Review sites. Metasearch. TV. Word-of-mouth.
The Dreaming and Planning Phases engage and intrigue the travel consumers and steer them toward “closing tbe deal” in the Booking Phase. And yes, younger generations are more influenced by digital platforms than older generations.
The question is, in which phase of the digital customer journey is the influence of social media most impactful? Definitely in the Dreaming and Planning Phases, and not in the Booking Phase.
