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Transcript of Thesis on Social Media, Travel and Search- MSc thesis of Alexandros Papageorgiou on Travel Social...
The Impact of Social Media on Online Travel Search
Master’s thesis of Alexandros Papageorgiou
Turku, 2010
3 basic components of the project
Social Media
Web Search
eTourism
Why these 3 areas? Social media & search
engines are the most visited destinations on the web
Both have a strong influence on travel decision making
Travel industry is a typical early adopter of new web technologies
What is Social Media ?
“Social media are works of user-generated content like video, audio, text or multimedia that are published and shared in a social environment, such as a blog, wiki or video sharing site.” (The Social Media Guide)
Examples:
General purpose Travel-specific
Examples of social media use in Tourism Marketing
Connecting the dots...
Travel + Search + Social Media
In search of a Finnish hotel ...
omena hotel
Multiple social media results returned
Key Observations
Key observations
The majority of travelers nowadays make use of the Internet to conveniently access travel information
Key observations
Typically, the gateway to travel information for most travelers is a web search engine
Key observations
Social media web sites tend to appear increasingly with high rankings in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs)
Key observations
Social media sites enjoy high credibility from consumers
So, exactly how high (or not) is the impact of social
media on travel information search ?
Main research questions
1.
Which is the proportion of social media results upon a travel search ?
2.
Which are the most dominant types of travel social media?
3.
Which are the top social media sites represented in the search results?
4.
How does the social media content on search results vary across the first three pages?
Research Design
Focus industry: Hospitality. Why ?
• The first search type typically made by travelers
• Usually the highest trip expenditure
• Ubiquity of hotels
• High brand sensitivity
Type of queries: {Hotel name + Destination}
Examples:
Hilton Athens
Radisson Helsinki
Best Western Rhodes
Research Design
6150 URLs were retrieved and reviewed from SERPs, involving over 100 hotel brands
Data collection
36 students from the E-commerce class of Åbo Akademi took part in the project by collecting and analyzing data
Geo: 12 cities in Finland & Greece
Landing pages reviewed in 3 languages
4 commercial search engines deployed
Research Results
Social media have a very significant presence in the SERPs
28%
72%
Social Media
Non-Social Media
Consumer review and virtual community sites, the most dominant
57.1%
21.3%
15.9%3.6% 1.7% 0.4%
Consumer Review Sites
Virtual community Sites
Blogs
OtherMedia Sharing Social Networks
Tripadvisor and Real Travel, the top social media sites in the sample
Social media site Frequency Frequency % Cumulative %
Tripadvisor 286 28.7% 28.7%
Real travel 94 9.4% 38.2%
Wikio 73 7.3% 45.5%
Virtual Tourist 61 6.1% 51.6%
TravBuddy 59 5.9% 57.5%
Travel Yahoo 49 4.9% 62.4%
TravelPod 40 4.0% 66.5%
Lonely Planet 30 3.0% 69.5%
Ciao 14 1.4% 70.9%
Hotel Chatter 12 1.2% 72.1%
Head-torso-long tail distribution of SM sites: 7% of the unique SM domains represent 70% of the sample’s total SM results
1 8 15 22 29 36 43 50 57 64 71 78 85 92 99 1061131201271341411481551620.0%
10.0%
20.0%
30.0%
40.0%
50.0%
60.0%
70.0%
80.0%
90.0%
100.0%
Cumulative % of SM representation
Cumulative % of unique domains
Cumulative number of unique domains
Tampere and Turku hotels the most social media friendly
Turku
FI
Tampere
FI
Rhodes GR
Patras
GR
Vantaa
FI
Piraeu
s GR
Thess
aloniki
GR
Laris
sa GR
Athens G
R
Espoo FI
Helsinki
FI
Herakli
on GRAVG
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
0.0%
5.0%
10.0%
15.0%
20.0%
25.0%
30.0%
35.0%
40.0%
45.0%
50.0%
SM frequency Non-SM Frequency SM/non-SM ratio
Locations
SM o
bser
vatio
ns
SM distribution is homogenous across the first three search pages
1 2 30%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
0.0%
5.0%
10.0%
15.0%
20.0%
25.0%
30.0%
27.1% 27.9% 28.0%
non-SM frequency
SM fre-quencySM/non-SM ratio
Search page
Top social media-friendly hotels
Hotel name City Country SM results
Omena Tampere Finland 27
Hotelli Kauppi Tampere Finland 19
Park Hotel Turku Finland 17
Scandic Julia Turku Finland 17
Best Western Plaza Rhodes Greece 16
Cosmopolitan Rhodes Greece 15
Faliraki SA Rhodes Greece 15
Hotelli Korpilampi Espoo Finland 15
Best Western Hotel Turku Finland 14
Sokos Turku Finland 14
Conclusions
Conclusions
Social media constitute a very significant portion of the search results and they are ubiquitous across all search pages (1-3) analyzed and all the destinations involved
Conclusions
A handful of sites, led by Tripadvisor, are responsible for the majority of social media presence in the SERPs
Conclusions
A striking absence was observed for the mainstream social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (this could signal a missed opportunity for travel marketers)
Conclusions
Medium-sized destinations prove to be the most social media friendly, leaving behind popular tourist hubs
Marketing Recommendations Travel companies can harness the power of social media by optimizing their mix of owned, bought and earned media
More details are available in section 8.4 of the thesis (p. 91-99)
The full text can be downloaded here:
http://bit.ly/cFVBNc
That’s it...
Aknowledgements
For her continuous guidance and feedback, my supervisor, prof. Pirkko Walden
For their precious ideas and comments:
Zheng Xiang (N. Texas University), Jussi-Pekka Erkkola (Nokia), Kim Holmberg (Åbo Akademi), Colette Gattoni (Åbo Akademi)
...and of course all the e-commerce students who took part in the project
Abayomi AyoolaElisa BourdonnayKlaus von Wendt ShanShan Lin
Abdallah Fekiri Frank Isaksson Liu Xinxu Simon BjörkströmAkhandlu Idahosa
Giang Huong Phan Luis Rodriguez Simone Tarolli
Abiodun Alabi Hendrik Nyström Marcus Forsström Sonja Leskinen
Bilal Altaf Hu Yanqi Mats Jakobsson Tetiana Denysova
Bright Mills Jonas Engman Michael Lahtinen Timo Repo
Chenqing Hou Jorge Lucic Muhammad Imran Tuomas Heinonen
David Pisoni Julie Bils Pavel Synek Veli-Pekka Vieru Dmytro Kanevsky Katarina Stubbe Sarah Lindström Zhang Jin