Using Social Media in the Chinese Online Travel Market

3rd Network Tourism Festival, Wenzhou China Nov 2010

Tourism Informationization and Tourism Network Marketing

sinotechgroup.com.cn

Topics

•  Fast Facts- SinoTech Group

•  What is social media?

•  How does social media impact on Chinese tourism

•  What can we do to leverage this new medium

sinotechgroup.com.cn

SinoTech Group - Fast Facts

•  Heritage in software development

•  95 employees

•  Global reach

•  Travel & Hospitality Focused

•  Offices in Beijing, Shanghai & Hong Kong

•  Founded in April, 2007

sinotechgroup.com.cn

SinoTech Group - Fast Facts

Without understanding the place for social media in tourism marketing, many in the travel ecosystem will underperform and miss the mainstream consumer shift �

sinotechgroup.com.cn

What is this thing called

sinotechgroup.com.cn

What is social media?

Social media combines a wide range of online, word-of-mouth forums including blogs, company sponsored discussion boards and chat rooms, consumer-to-consumer e-mail, consumer product or service ratings websites and forums, Internet discussion boards and forums, and micro-blogs. (Wikipedia)

sinotechgroup.com.cn

The characteristics of Social Media

•  Open to all •  Conversations & Dialogue •  Relationship Development •  Diverse Voices / Perspectives •  Message Delivery to Stakeholders via:

–  Social media press release –  Video news release –  Internet –  Social networking communities / influencers –  Live streaming

sinotechgroup.com.cn

How does social media impact on Chinese tourism

sinotechgroup.com.cn

Online travel in China is a significant business

•  Estimated Online Travel Booking in 2010 is RMB5.47 Billion ($.75 Billion)

(Data Center of China Internet, 2010)

• The number of citizens taking internet as the main channel to get tourism information accounted for 66.7% of China’s total,

• Citizens who have made a hotel reservation by internet amounted to 70.2% of China’s total,

• Citizens who have booked air tickets by internet accounted for 70.7% of China’s total,

• Citizens who have booked holiday products by internet amounted to 20.3% of China’s total

sinotechgroup.com.cn

And ..user generated content is very influential

56.3% of users said that they “got to know brands”

through online channels.

58.7% actually made purchase decisions based on

user-generated online info (compared to only 19% in

U.S.).

Even when not making a purchase, 89.9% of users still

pay attention to online comments.

81% check online comments before

purchasing a product.

sinotechgroup.com.cn

Online Influence

Over the next 2 years Chinese will be significantly more influenced by online discussions

Source: Forrester Research

sinotechgroup.com.cn

Chinese are active online content creators

Portion of Internet users who have published blogs, web pages, articles, stories, videos or audio/content on social technologies

Source: Forrester Research

sinotechgroup.com.cn

Asians are Online

43% of all internet users are from Asia

sinotechgroup.com.cn

What can we do to leverage social media for Tourism

sinotechgroup.com.cn

Use a social media framework

SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS

sinotechgroup.com.cn

Take the 6 Baby Steps

• Start to listen to what is being said, where and by whom • Consider, do we engage, monitor or do nothing • To engage, think about what you are trying to achieve

and in what timeframe? • Develop your messaging strategy, social media should

not be list of random conversations • Consider your audience and where they reside online • Measure, refine and optimize

sinotechgroup.com.cn

Social Media Analytics

sinotechgroup.com.cn

Insights, not just data

Volume Word counts/tag cloud Entry 4meline High‐level topics Venue analysis Influence Drill‐down to entries 

1.0 Monitoring 

2.0 Mining 

Sen4ment Topics and subtopics Voices/par4cipants Key influen4als Incident‐level repor4ng Custom repor4ng elements Human analysis 

sinotechgroup.com.cn

Automatically determine the sentiment

sinotechgroup.com.cn 20

Social Channels

SinoTech Group Confidential

Authors

Who is saying what & where

sinotechgroup.com.cn

Map Overlay

Map Overlay - The map overlay identifies the location of the media source. The larger the marker, the greater the number of results from this location.

SinoTech Group Confidential

Are people talking about us ?

sinotechgroup.com.cn

Examples for Destinations, Airlines & Hoteliers

sinotechgroup.com.cn

By monitoring and comparing online brand sentiment, you can benchmark and trend destinations

For Destinations– Brand Sentiment Indexing

Chengdu has the greatest online brand sentiment in China vs. other Chinese cities

sinotechgroup.com.cn

You need to evaluate your brand sentiment

For Airlines– Dynamic score cards

Airlines can score card their performance by measuring online sentiment

sinotechgroup.com.cn

You need to listen and understand what is being said.

For Hoteliers– Consumer Review Analysis

Hoteliers can simply and quickly review what is being said about their property (or that of their competitors)

sinotechgroup.com.cn

1. Social Commerce 2. Mobile, more and more

What’s next

sinotechgroup.com.cn

“Tell me and I’ll forget; Show me and I may remember; Involve me and I’ll understand.”

ANCIENT CHINESE PROVERB

sinotechgroup.com.cn

Thank you - 谢谢 Dr Mathew McDougall | @sinotechian

sinotechgroup.com.cn | @sinotechgroup