Travel conferences around the world are buzzing about the dramatic changes impacting the online travel market. Three principal themes appear to emerge at each conference:
- Online travel has become more complex, particularly when managing customer relationships.
- Self-professed social media “experts” should be avoided at all costs.
- Earning trust is the most important element to ensure community engagement.
Given the critical importance of trust in an environment with increased complexity and growing confusion, the obvious question is, who does the travel industry trust as the authority in online travel?
Below is a list of analysts, leaders of online travel sites and global distribution systems, influential bloggers, twitter personalities, association executives and journalists that are all outspoken in their opinions on the online travel space. If you had to select only one person to for insight and advice, who would it be?
[polldaddy poll=”2957986″]
Try this link if you do not see the poll embedded above.
If the name of your favorite online travel authority was excluded from the initial list, please drop me a note using this link and I will do my best to quickly add them to the list.
Voting will remain open until Friday morning, April 2, 2010 at 7:00am US Central time. Sorry, only one vote per person, so rally your social network to support your favorite.
Many challenges face the global travel industry. New business models, competitive marketing strategies, emerging mobile technologies, interactive customer engagement and the constant need to drive profitability create complexities that were never previously imagined by hotels, destinations, airlines or online travel companies.
Each week, RockCheetah and the Views from a Corner Suite blog will present a new poll to gauge the sentiment of the travel industry, and of course, allow respondents to comment on the issues at hand.