Over 5000 people “Like” him on Facebook – over 700 are following and having conversations with the deceased playwright daily on Twitter all resulting in record number online ticket sales.

Social Media Marketing Campaign Objectives:

To increase direct online sales by growing traffic to the website www.shawfest.com, and by engaging new audiences outside of the traditional target demographics for the theatre company.

The primary objective was to present the Shaw Festival, and each individual Play to a wider group of would-be theatre goers who may have not otherwise considered attending, or had preconceived ideas about the theatre, or the specific productions for the season.

The overall objective in developing the social media strategy was to engage the growing fan base who are actively living online by providing them with insight to the Shaw Festival (with a behind-the-scenes focus), regular special offers (ensuring fans are driven to the special offers page regularly when offers are available), customer service (answering questions about the ticketing process and travel to the area), George Bernard Shaw quotes and information about the plays to generate interest, and useful information for those visiting (events, festivals, Niagara-on-the-Lake visitor info).

The theatre company, located in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, produces ten plays each year and is a key tourism driver for Niagara-on-the-Lake and the Niagara region as a whole.

The multi-channel digital strategy launched Summer 2009, and was created by online marketing firm A Couple of Chicks e-Marketing, and managed in co-ordination with the Shaw Festival in-house Marketing Communications team with the overall goals of increased online ticket sales and new audience development.

The Strategy:

To develop a way to impact and talk directly to Shaw’s audiences in places they are comfortable interacting, as well as to encourage viral distribution of the Shaw and its productions online.

Developing a voice and tone for each community, building out content such as comments about the productions, backstage photos, video’s, images – and developing a strong engagement level with this audience was the focus in the early growth stages for the campaign.

A unique strategy was developed for each social channel.

Once Shaw himself started tweeting quotes and responding to comments and questions (from the grave of course), and the Facebook page for the theatre grew to include commentaries, discussions and more – followers began flocking to the Facebook community, the Twitter page, the YouTube channel, the theatre Blog – and back to the main web asset www.shawfest.com to transact via a communities page that brought all of the social channels together in one place.

The campaign was also supported with Google Adwords campaigns as well as optimized Press Releases, website content development, and ongoing Search Engine Optimization.

The Challenges:

1. Ensuring that the social media communities were not only large in number, but also actively engaged. It was uncertain if the target audience would move from discussing and browsing to buying.

2. Determining an accurate ROI on each tactic.
Tracking was put in place to ensure that sales conversions could be measured back to the specific social media efforts. Facebook only offers were also created.

3. Building up the community base for a niche theatre with different plays targeted to different audiences. Considerations included determining how to build followers who were within drive-in radius (the traditional core market) and to ensure Facebook and Twitter audiences moved to transact by creating the proper user path that encouraged click thru to the website.

Campaign Tactics:

Facebook Fan page, Facebook Tab Development, Twitter community development and strategy, Theatre Blog (featuring behind the scenes), YouTube channel and Flickr photo page development – brought together within a Social Communities page entitled “Stay Connected”.

Campaigns within each community included Facebook specific Ticket offers, contests, behind-the-scenes videos, Blogs written by members of the company, videos with candid conversations with the actors and directors – all integrated into the larger marketing campaign messages. The campaign was measured using conversion tracking in Google Analytics as well as through campaign specific ticket rate codes.

The Blog:    http://blogs.shawfest.com/

The blog serves a dual purpose, generating content for consumers – and generating content that can be indexed in the search engines. The Blog can be easily integrated with other social media efforts and vice versa.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/shawfestival

Engages and builds a new fan base by providing insight to the Shaw Festival (behind-the-scenes focus), regular special offers (ensuring fans are driven to the special offers page regularly when offers are available), customer service (answering questions about the ticketing process), Shaw quotes and information about the plays to generate interest, and useful information for those visiting (events, festivals, NOTL info).

This was supported by a Facebook Ad campaign to build the initial Fan Base and to push specific offers to a targeted audience.

Twitter: www.twitter.com/shawtheatre

The strategy behind Twitter was primarily brand development and a key to engaging the audience;  it also serves as a customer service tool and a PR monitoring/growth mechanism to correspond with media. Twitter maintains the “voice” of Shaw himself with commentaries about the plays, politics and other musings.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/theshawfestival

YouTube.com was used to grow multimedia content and house video content where it can be sourced from other social media venues, and add to overall online distribution of the Shaw brand. Back of the house video’s, Shaw commercials and other video’s were added to engage the audience.

Go behind the scenes at the Shaw Festival Theatre

‘Stay Connected’ Communities Page: http://www.shawfest.com/Home/Stay-Connected

The website was updated with a ‘Stay Connected’ communities page to offer a central portal for all things social media. The community’s page drives traffic to the various social media outlets in which Shaw participates and serves as the landing page from social media into the site – and to the online ticket box office.

Results Summary:

With Social Media as an evolving advertising medium, the Social Media Marketing Strategy was extremely successful in generating buzz, traffic to the main website and sales. The campaign was featured in the Globe and Mail, and used as a best practice case study at a leading Canadian Online Marketing Conference. The campaign also successfully built a platform that will continue to evolve and drive targeted traffic and sales moving forward.

By growing connections (fan base, followers), aggressively distributing content, and building the level of engagement with new core audiences outside of the typical target audiences, the Shaw Festival was successful in expanding brand awareness with new audiences, and increasing ticket sales online by 25%.

As a result of the digital marketing efforts, Shaw Festival has experienced significant e-commerce sales growth:

• The Spring 2010 season (April 2009 to June 2010) was 7,000 tickets ahead of Spring 2009, selling almost 50% more tickets for the April launch of the season than the April 2009 season.

• Year to Date 27% of sales are online and currently sales are $325,000 over the Year to Date total last year at this time.

• Traffic to the website increased by 17% over the same time in 2009.

Other Campaign Highlights:

• Year over year increase in Website traffic reaching a peak at almost 4,000 unique visits in one day.

• Increases Engagement with website users visiting over 9 pages per visit and spending over 5 minutes on the site.

• Referring sites such as Facebook, Twitter and other social channels provided more search engine visibility as well as more Referring traffic back to the transactional website shawfest.com.

The Social Media Marketing campaign and Web Marketing efforts were also supported and integrated into an aggressive offline campaign that included traditional marketing vehicles such as print and radio – and resulted in growth of new audiences and record attendance.

The Shaw Festival is currently planning for the 2011 season and for the 50th anniversary celebrations.  George Bernard Shaw continues his musings on Twitter “often quoting himself…as it adds spice to the conversation”

With Twitter connections all over Ontario and the world commenting about their experiences, using a Twitter hashtag #earthquake created within seconds after the tremor – and a minimum of 100 tweets per minute coming in with accounts of the tremor experienced from Montreal to Buffalo and beyond – I am getting breaking news not from traditional news outlets but through the twitterverse.

The act of ‘tweeting‘ 140 character soundbites and Social media in general are rapidly affecting the way that we interact, and consume overall media and there is no debating that. I still hear many complaints that there is no measurable ‘ROI’ on spending time building and managing Social media spaces – but I would say specifically using this example to illustrate the way in which communications have changed that we have no choice but to embrace the medium.

Specifically, traditional media and PR professionals must adapt to using channels such as Twitter to gain back lost readers who would consume news traditionally through print, TV and radio. Also – media must participate to stay in the know of breaking news.

Journalists must also be aware of who the ‘influencers’ are within social media spaces – and they need to embrace Twitter as a way to guide the conversation and become the offical ‘voice’ around any major breaking story and not so much report it.

The Globe and Mail and CTV – both major news outlets in Canada were quick to jump into the conversation about the Earthquake – but they were no longer the source of the breaking news as it would have been in the past for news outlets such at CNN.

Many Canadian news giants engaged an already active Twittering community to gather newsworthly insights and facts as to how wide the Earthquake impact had been felt, its scale (reported at 5.5).   Globaltvnews even “twe-ported” (just made that up…sounded good) a mapping depiction of Tweets sent within 30 min after the quake was felt – and the tweet ‘report’ came in only 35 min after the quake.

News outlets making news of Twitter as a source for breaking news – how ironic is that?

I will continue to follow the #Earthquake hashtag as a trending topic now for the next few hours to see where the conversation goes from here – but I would guess that the very way in which the quake was experienced accross Ontario and into New York state via Twitter will be the real story told in the weeks to come.

The Twitter Do’s:

1. Use Twitter. Google indexes Twitter Feeds and drives traffic to your website!

2. Strategize. Plan ahead with an editorial schedule to tie in with planned events, promotions, etc.

3. Be consistent with profile information i.e. using brand “http://www.twitter.com/acoupleofchicks” or “http://twitter.com/HfxNovaScotia” as name, URL, descriptor.

4. Use your ‘brand’ as graphic background; see ex: http://twitter.com/BayOfFundy.

5. Use 3&3 rule – three tweets and three re-tweets per day. (but make sure it is authentic)

6. Tweet smart; tweet at different times throughout the day; use ‘pending tweets’ functionality to schedule tweets outside of your work day but in time zones relevant to potential target audiences.

7. Use auto-welcomes i.e. “Thank you for following Tourism Fredericton – your source for things to see and do in Fredericton, the Provincial Capital of New Brunswick. Want to find out even more about what’s happening? Check out our other Twitter feeds….” note: auto follows are not always a “do” but for Destinations a good practice

8. Tweet using your targeted keywords.

9. Use pics and website URL’s (remember to use URL shortener like tinyurl.com).

10. Proper Twitter etiquette is to follow those who follow you – but be cautious of “cleaning” your list of who you follow regularly.

11. Follow your competitors and their followers.

12. Speak and engage with your audience; Differentiate yourselves from being broadcasters (i.e. online newspapers on Twitter) to rich content providers. (this is a key point!)

13. Link to your Twitter feeds (& show them on your site) from all that you do online & offline; see: http://www.travelportland.com/visitors/twitter.html and http://www.halifaxsociable.com

14. Follow other DMO’s or destinations and don’t be afraid of some back and forth conversation – could spark something interesting!

15. Follow partners in your communities; Hotels, attractions etc already on Twitter and reach out and engage with them

16. Have fun! Bring out your inner quirky-self. (the Chicks certainly have!!!) Check out some of our other Chicks on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/hrmchick – we are a quirky bunch!

Twitter Don’t Do’s:

PCMag’s Top 13 Don’ts – all of which make sense to us!

1. Don’t live-tweet TV shows. (this chick is guilty of that sometimes I have to admit)
2. Don’t say anything that could get you fired or prevent you from getting a job.
3. Don’t be boring.
4. Don’t forget the Twitter lingo: RT is retweet, and @name is how you respond or give props to someone.
5. Don’t tweet more than ten times a day, or more than five times an hour.
6. Don’t reply to every single tweet.
7. Don’t tweet drunk.
8. Don’t tell us about something cool or life-changing without a link or picture.
9. Don’t retweet something and leave off the original Twitter poster.
10. Don’t ignore people who send you a direct message or a reply.
11. Don’t #hashtag every topic.
12. Don’t whine about people not following you.
13. Don’t tweet your bathroom habits. (haha!)

I felt compelled to add the following other Twitter don’t do’s:

14. don’t respond to everything too quickly (although tempting) think and then tweet.

15. don’t twitter stalk (don’t be offended if you don’t get a response to every tweet you send or RT you offer up).

16.  don’t tweet and drive.

17.  don’t tweet marketing messages unless your audience is ready to receive them from you.

Tourism Tweeters to Follow: check out some of our favorites:

http://twitter.com/HfxNovaScotia

http://twitter.com/visitmaine

http://twitter.com/sydney_holidays

http://twitter.com/BaltimoreMD

http://twitter.com/tourism_burnaby

http://twitter.com/arizonatourism

Chick Recommended Reads:

· Suite 101 – 6 Twitter Tips for Tourism Offices – How Destination Management Organizations Can Maximize Micro-blogging

· Wilhemus – Twitter for Travel and Tourism: Wrapping my head around it – http://www.wilhelmus.ca/2009/01/twitter-for-travel-and-tourism-wrapping-my-head-around-it.html

Chick note: We know William (@Wilhelmus) well and we are quite sure that it did not take him long to wrap his head around Twitter for travel – even with all the hair he has on his head (which is really quite alot!)

· CIO’s – Twitter Etiquette: Five Dos and Don’ts

Happy Tweeting!

signed @acoupleofchicks

From “A Couple of Chicks who just know what we are doing,” to more than 12 Chicks (and guys too) who are work on online marketing programs with brands such as the new Intercontinental New York Times Square,  Ignite Magazine, Destination Halifax and many more – we have come a long way baby!

It was time for the original chicks‘ – named for our childhood nicknames “Cici” (Alicia) and “Petunia” (Patricia) to step back and take a little break. (never to go away forever we promise!)

We are happy to report that both Cici and Petunia are resting on a beach with some margaritas as their new iconic chick counterparts take over as the face of A Couple of Chicks eMarketing.

A Couple of Chicks eMarketing

The journey we took to get to this new look was intense as we spend so much time working on the “other people’s websites” and overall marketing, that taking a hard look at our own brand was eye opening.

As we have evolved from primarily a Search Engine Optimization company five years ago, to the full service Digital Marketing Agency that we are today – with services that include everything from Online PR to Social Media Marketing to ongoing digital marketing program management, it was time to take the plunge.

Ross Rodgers and his amazing design team at Radonic Rodgers Design + Marketing, along with our own Chick creative architect Amy Seagram, took us through the journey to determine how we were going to maintain the fun and personality in the brand – but evolve the look and content to speak to what we really do for a living!

The result as you can see here on the Blog, and on our Twitter.com/acoupleofchicks profile are the first to go live, with the website updates coming in April.

As we have worked on so many web presence re-fresh projects over the past five years, we are glad to have taken this project on as what we have been reminded is that there is no good time to do it!

We are lucky to have a team of people who have assisted us in this exercise and are thrilled with the result. A good reminder that sometimes you need to take the time to take a good look at your own branding and what is says about you. A nice 5th anniversary gift to the Chicks we think – enjoy the beach ladies, you have had quite a good ride!

This question has had us thinking.

Why the story? Over the past five years since Patricia and I founded A Couple of Chicks’, we have had the pleasure of not only traveling across Canada and the US, but also of really knowing the places and people we are working with – and more importantly – what makes them unique.

So why are these stories so important to the success of what we do? I guess we could just go back to the marketing 101 textbook, which among other things, teaches us to understand the customer. Yes, we have research for that (and lots of it), and while many businesses don’t have the time or resources to individually know every customer, Patricia and I have been lucky enough to be invited into communities, and to really know the people we work with and are speaking to in the workshops and presentations that we do.

In fact, the “stories” have become so ingrained into our methodology that I am not quite sure that our strategies would be as effective without them.

Yes the latest digital marketing trend is important and relevant, and yes we need to understand the latest shift in Google’s algorithms, the new rules on 301 redirects, and how to add a source code to paid search ads for proper measurement – but we also need the narrative behind each unique web strategy, and the people that are building them. How can we truly roll out a successful and engaging web marketing program without first understanding the nuances of the business and who the customers are?

I will quote a Blogger who recently attended one of our presentations (said Blogger happens to be the “techy” son of the owner/operator of a successful Inn in Eastern Canada, who tagged along with his dad to listen to what the Chicks’ were saying about this whole online marketing thing). (Note the “story” in this paragraph)

He writes, “If every prospective guest to the Carriage House could flip through the pages of the guest book sitting in the lobby, they wouldn’t even consider staying elsewhere. With Facebook and Twitter, this is now entirely possible to do online, and relatively easy to promote.”

I could not have said it better myself! So although the research, the training, efficient process and project management skills are all key to assisting businesses to be successful online – sometimes telling a story does it best.

Hey L.S – we think you are on to something btw. The technology driven “writer’s utopia” may just be in sight, but alas we must make sure it is profitable too. And yes I did just use “btw” in that sentence!

Niki Leondakis, COO of Kimpton also points out in the HNN article that integration of social tools such as Blogs into the main websites is planned for the coming year as well as a continued focus on encouraging “tweetups” and other ways for social communities to connect around Kimpton brands. This approach to integration instead of a web presence over here on facebook, one on Twitter – another on a Blog will be confusing to consumers as we grow more comfortable with true interaction and communication directly with brands.

My guess is that the successful hotel brand website as it is today will look very different in the very near future and will need to be the central gathering place for all brand points online – as well as the place for transaction.

Jim Zito, VP of interactive marketing for New York-based Morgans Hotel Group speaks more about going back to what works offline to assist in strategy for the new online media world. Zito is consulting with groups offline and online to really listen to how consumer behavior has changed in the new social online world. Smart. Not jumping in without understanding why first and making sure you are truly ‘hearing’ what your customers are responding to.

Then there is Fairmont Hotels and Resorts – a brand who has not been shy in adapting to this new marketing medium. David Doucette executive director of Internet marketing for Fairmont speaks about the brand’s use of exsisting social networks where consumers are already living and interacting (Tripadvisor), as well as the launch of a new social networking platform built around Fairmont brand stories for Fairmont brand loyalists.

Brilliant if I may say. Fairmont has a storied brand history, an consumer segment that is passionate about the brand, beautiful historic properties – and ‘stories’ to tell which may just be why building a specific brand social media community will work for them. Fairmont’s www.everyonesanoriginal.com social media community has just recently launched.

fairmont's www.everyonesandoriginal.com social media community recently launches

What I like specifically about this article is that it focussed not on the “What” the big hotel brands are doing but “Why.” It is clear that Kimpton Hotels and Resorts, Morgan’s Hotel Group and Fairmont have clearly laid out strategy, deployed testing, feedback from their customers and have determined their key measurables for both Brand loyalty and ROI. This is clearly not a result of which chains have the largest budgets – and a good lesson to the industry as a whole.

Chris Breikss Super Fan Vancouver Olympics 2010

The newest chick in the coop has inspired me to get back to my Blogging roots as I have moved towards micro-blogging sound-bites on twitter instead of taking time to muse about all things online. Thanks Patti for a fantastic guest Blog entry this week and thanks for the kick in the butt to get blogging again!

I can’t help as a proud Canadian to reflect on Vancouver’s achievement in producing an amazing Winter Olympic Games. We were truly watching the first ever Digital Olympics with this one – and I am happy to say that I think that Canada was well prepared for all of the media channels that were watching this country for the 14 days of the games. It will be interesting to hear now how the traditional media outlets faired.

Although millions were glued to televisions as Sidney Crosby scored the winning goal for Canada in overtime against the US hockey team (could not help but mention that one – that would have been so un-Canadian) – I wonder how many millions also watched events via live streaming video, or through a twitter stream of Olympic athletes tweeting updates live from events, ceremonies and from the general festivities that surrounded the games.

It will be interesting to see also how many downloads there were of the Olympics iPhone Apps, and how many Flickr streams there will be posted by athletes and athletes families from inside the Olympics Village and other “behind the scenes” places.

I must say that viewing photos live from a hockey game such as this one of “a young russian hockey fan” posted by my friend and colleague Chris Breikss after Russia lost to team Canada. Chris enjoyed many an Olympic moment on behalf of 900 of his Facebook friends- and I enjoyed seeing updates live on my mobile facebook app from friends as they experienced some of the winning Olympics moments live.   It allowed me to feel like a participant in the stories like no television broadcast has ever been able to do.

Kudos to the organizers, to the city of Vancouver British Columbia, to the Canadian Tourism Commission, to the media and bloggers, the athletes – and to all of the fans who tweeted, posted, blogged and text messaged your experiences of the games…the first digital Olympics was a great success!

Can I write anything of relevance using more than 140 characters? (I’m a seasoned Twitter-er.) What if no one reads this?  What if everyone reads this?  Do I have anything important to say?  What if there is criticism, and I‘m attacked by the grammar-hammers?  And, more importantly, what if The Chicks think I suck???  Lot’s of what-if angst…

[insert deep breath here]

In Chick-dom we refer to “The Social Butterfly” as most commonly found between the age range of 15-25 and being big influencers on buying decisions.  Social butterflies “fly” or “flit” from site to site based on popularity or what’s cool amongst their peers – wherever the nectar is the sweetest.

Butterflies are sharing their experiences through sites like YouTube, MySpace and Facebook.  This group has grown up online and is comfortable sharing personal information and interacting with other online users.  I know this from personal experience with having a 15 (going on 25) year-old; as I’m constantly amazed at how they can chat, text, take photo’s and video’s, and put together a Christmas list (with links to the products and their websites) – all at the same time (yet the simple task of cleaning her bedroom is simply overwhelming!).  This is the same kid who put together a Powerpoint presentation at the age of 12 on why she should be allowed to go to a bon-fire party with no parents.

My point being that butterflies are multi-taskers and have a zero-tolerance attention span.  They do their research online and value the opinions of those within their online community through ‘word of mouse‘.  As marketers to said butterflies, we need to go where they are.  Must-haves include the capability for uploading media, personalizing their space and being able to invite their friends to visit; we need to accommodate the thirst and inherent need to socialize.

In January 2010 a Facebook Fan Page for “If you remember the L’OrealKids FISH SHAPED SHAMPOO BOTTLE” was created and to date there are almost 1.2 million fans.  Fans have uploaded pictures of L’Oreal products, and pictures of themselves holding L’Oreal products.

The page does not look like an official L’Oreal page, and the page creator goes by the name “Tanner Be”.  Tanner Be might be just a highly creative teenager with a lot of time on his hands, or he/she might just be a cleverly-disguised digital marketer (hey…we do what we have to) for L’Oreal.

This is a perfect example of a brand “being social”, whether intentional on the brand’s behalf or not.  This also illustrates the glaring fact that you need to brand yourself, or someone else will most certainly do it for you.

Get your butterfly nets out, and remember to have fun along the way!

2009 saw Facebook take a page from Twitter with live feeds of content replacing the display of content listed by friends most frequented – much to the initial resistance from many a Facebook user. Now we have to work to stalk our ‘friends’ because if they are not updating what they are doing by the minute, we are going have to dig deep to see what they are making for dinner.

With live feeds of content from social media channels such as Twitter, and Facebook- integrated media consumption became the norm in 2009.  Google and CNN are no longer the only sources for breaking “news” stories, and live television now leads to online discussions and minute by minute commentary from millions of people in online communities discussing such important topics as which man the bachelorette should choose, and why the dude with the bad muscle shirt should be ousted from the list of hopefuls – if only for his poor choice in wardrobe.

Social networking online went to new levels in ’09 with live content feeds on Facebook allowing us to capture everything from where we are, to how we are feeling, to what we look like in an instant, appearing to hundreds of our closest friends.

2009 was also the year that “gone viral” was actually something good – it meant people liked you! Even if your most embarrassing moment was being viewed by 15 million people – instant celebrity can now be achieved. Just ask the poor kid who was living out his fantasy of being a Jedi warrior (which was secretly captured on video and posted to YouTube). Not only did 15 million see this, but they also commented and created spoofs with special effects and music to further add to our experience. Ahhhh the new tools of virtual voyeurism.

And then there is the mobile phone. With the SMS – or text, a whole new language has emerged and has been adapted by multiple generations. Kids are texting hugs and kisses to their Grandma’s, wives are sending reminders to pick up the milk…some are even breaking up with a quick one-line SMS.

It is amazing how 5 letters appearing on our mobile screen can make us feel connected, happy, relieved and loved. When did ‘LOL’ and ‘TTYL’ become code for “you are so funny and I feel that I must validate your last message by telling you that or you might misconstrue my silence for lack of interest” and “I am thinking of you too and can’t wait to send you cryptic messages again later when I have more time to think about how to be smart, witty and and down with the new technology at the same time.”

If 2009 was the year of the Tweet, 2010 may be the year of the APP. Mobile browsers in phones such as the Blackberry and iPhone have enabled access to everything online at any time. Want to know the name of the song that is playing? Want help with your golf swing? Want to know what to make for dinner with what is in your fridge? There is an APP for that! Perhaps by 2011 we will rely on APPS to tell us it is time to have a nap or take out the garbage.

The capturing of the sound-bites of my life in Facebook status updates, in video and photo uploads, in daily tweets of conversation (with the 14,000 people that have chosen to listen to my rants) has ironically taught me to be in the moment, to enjoy the people I am sharing the moment with – as it is happening.

My final reflection for 2009? It looks like a pretty fun life on Facebook – take some time to enjoy it in reality too!

This article in Hotel News Now summarizes the discussion nicely – but I must also highlight the summary of points that Patricia gave me that nicely puts things into perspective.

The panel, which was titled, “Economy in Transition” with Panelists from Expedia, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, Trust International Hotel Reservation Services, and Smith Travel Research, pointed out the following:

1. Watch the Buzz – but Buzz doesn’t always = Buy

2. Go back to basics with your value proposition, an easy booking process and good service. (seems logical)

3. Use Social Media to better understand your customer (Customer relationship management at it’s best – isn’t that a no brainer!? We can now see exactly what our customers are saying – all of the time.)

As Patricia stated “We’ve gone from going online to living online…Consumers, particularly in hospitality and travel, are looking for things relevant and authentic.”

So is Social Media affecting the electronic distribution channels for the travel industry? Sure it is…but we have been through this before and will be down this road again.

Perhaps as this panel pointed out we should get back to basics of listening to our customers (who are living online) and providing an excellent travel experience no matter how they found us.