Travel website community building – more thoughts

Following on from my previous post about using social networks for travel websites, here are some further thoughts , and answers to questions raised in comments to my previous post.

Enrico asked “Consider a local destination – how can you implement a social network in a travel destination that may only be visited once in a lifetime”.

This question comes down to the problem with community building in that you need your users to come and join your community - not only to “read”, but also to interact – by creating a profile, joining forums, asking questions and adding comments, uploading photos, videos etc. Users need to see the benefit to themselves, not just the benefit to you.

If a user only looks to travel with your company once or twice, you may struggle to build a longer term online relationship with them as there is no reason for a user to come back to your network “next time”. You need that long term connection between users to make a successful social network.

I guess this is why the social networks that are not company specific – such as Wayn, Boo etc may work, because their networks are not around any specific product from an individual company, but about a longer term relationship with users who are interested in travel in general. This is the same for the Lonely Planet Thorntree, probably one of the first travel communities to reach any significant size.

Perhaps in these situations a forum would be better - as forums tend to be about questions and answers – and more searchable for reference. Social networks tend to be about the “here and now” – and are more “conversational” like a discussion in the bar. Alternatively, take the Amazon approach. There are (although I have not counted them!) 10 ways for a user to interact with the website (like review a book, add a comment on a review, buy a book etc)…. you wouldn’t call their website a social network – but they have a successful community.

Gooner (not a real name surely!), from 2wentysWorld (a social network part of FirstChoice), has another perspective. He suggests the problem is more about monetising the network.

One case study would be the Florida forums from Travel City Direct. In my opinion they don’t need to monetise their community directly because if they just promote Florida in general, this will drive more flight and attraction ticket sales – either sold by them or others - and as they run the aeroplanes (via XL Airways) – any business going to Florida from the UK is good for them. Travel City Direct’s forums also address Enrico’s question above as it is a good, destination specific, place to discuss travel. It is probably also helped by being heavily focussed on Disney – which retains long term interest with users – rather than about specific trip planning and research.

Going back to the FirstChoice social network experiment – the idea is sound – with the audience being those travelling on their 2wentys brand (who you would expect would be heavy social network users). However how they have implemented their site leaves quite a bit to be desired technically and from a user experience perspective – It is simple things – like them selling your data to third parties – data brokers etc…. This is not the kind of social network I want to join – so perhaps First Choice’s focus should less be on monetisation – and more on making the social network an asset to the customer experience.

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