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Traveling in the age of Facebook Open Graph

November 30, 2011 | Hotel Marketing

The hyper-interactive travel consumer is a new breed of engaged and informed traveler. With Facebook Open Graph and Facebook commerce, the travel industry has tremendous opportunities to market to travelers across the social curve.

Travel and shopping are probably two of the most social activities we do with friends and loved ones. The hyper-interactive travel consumer is a new breed of engaged and informed traveler. They talk about travel before they travel, while they travel, and after they travel. With Facebook Open Graph and Facebook commerce, the travel industry has tremendous opportunities to market to travelers across the social curve.

More than 250 million photos are uploaded daily on Facebook and many travel-related photos are part of this activity. With the new Facebook Timeline, travelers will likely be sharing their experiences, such as the places they have been and the people they have traveled with, with their friends more often. The Timeline could become a scrapbook of your friends' travel experiences, allowing you to easily see where your friends have been traveling and may very well lead you to your next journey.

Many travel sites have started to integrate Facebook Connect into their web experience; the most notable is perhaps TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor is what Facebook calls a "new instant personalization partner," as the site becomes customized for you by using your public information and list of friends from Facebook for more curated and personalized information. When you visit TripAdvisor using Facebook Connect, the site acts like a personalized travel planner, complete with friends' reviews and a map showing places friends have visited. TripAdvisor reports that Facebook users are twice as likely to share their experiences.

Get the full story at ClickZ

Read also "Facebook takes on role of travel concierge"

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