Social media is about more than profit and loss, Spannerworks business development manager Madeline Woods has told the travel industry.
Woods said as social media, such as blogging, wikis and podcasts, become more mainstream the number of people commenting online about travel brands was growing.
She said the effect of social media could not be measure in clicks and sales.
“People are making comments about their experiences online and customers are using these channels to inform what they buy and where they buy it. People can make a complaint online and Google can grasp it,” added Woods.
She said people researched an average of six times on the web before making a travel purchase.
Woods argued that the belief that social media was not relevant to agents as their customers did not use sites like MySpace.com was a fallacy.
She said between 40% and 60% of MySpace users were aged between 34 and 45 and comments on search engines and web sites were more trusted than customer comments in brochures.