Whitepaper - Leveraging Mobile Technology and Social Media

White Paper

Filling the Void - Leveraging Mobile Technology and Social Media at Times of Crisis

By Kurt Knackstedt and George Freney

The Situation

Travel continues to be a fickle process, wrought with numerous opportunities for things to go horribly wrong and inconvenience millions of people when you take into account the actual travelers, their families, and the overall industry, which supports them.  Incidents nearly always occur unannounced and unpredictably, creating instantaneous chaos and confusion.  Managing these situations takes thousands of man-­-hours and often has financial impacts into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and continues to be a frequent difference between profit and loss for many travel businesses.  

Given the numerous entities, which support or form the base of the travel process, these disruptions create havoc within the multi­-faceted fabric, which makes up the travel industry.  Travel agencies and corporate travel management companies provide booking and traveler services, airlines, hotels and car hire companies accept those bookings and offer the physical facilitation of travel, and countless other organizations from taxis to restaurants to public transportation are all part of the equation. 

With the arrival of social media as a new dimension within the travel experience, disruptions to the process and people involved within travel are now instantaneously reacted to on a scale unprecedented in modern times. 

Technology and strategies do exist to ensure the fabric of the industry can be woven into modern  media and communication methods, but is this being done effectively?  This White Paper argues that as of today, it is not; however with some foresight, focus and attention, and customer­-centric thinking, there are significant opportunities for key players in the travel value chain to harness the power of mobile platforms and social media networks for a new level of service and support to affected travelers.   

Given the randomness of the aforementioned disruptive events and the varying scale of their impacts, key travel providers such as airlines, airports and intermediaries such as travel management companies have struggled to understand how best to service and inform their customers during these times of challenge. Information goes undistributed, facts are lost and conjecture rules the day. And travelers frustrated to no end at their plight - turn to their social networks via mobile devices to vent their justified frustrations. These frustrations turn into news with the touch of a button and the follow-on PR onslaught is often a negative nightmare for many travel providers. 

Adding to the challenge is that a significant amount of people travelling are doing so on behalf of the companies they work for, which also adds in tremendous expense from disruptions.  Business people who are not able to get to where they need to be costs companies money in added travel expenses, lost productivity, and increased obligations with the company’s duty of care to those travelling on their behalf. 

Given the numerous impacted parties - travelers, corporations, travel agencies, travel management companies, and travel suppliers - there is an emerging opportunity for an approach to managing these difficult situations, which combines the power of social media with the ubiquitous communication medium, which exists via mobile systems. Any organization which is responsible for the well-­-being and efficiency of travelers - be they for business or for leisure - must understand their role in helping affected individuals and find a way to leverage this dynamic and powerful approach to communication and information sharing. 

Corporations, travel management companies, travel agencies and travel suppliers should not try to address this issue solely by filling the aforementioned vacuum with their own views and information solely.  Rather, they should embrace the dynamics of social media by providing the platform and capabilities for travelers and their providers to interact, facilitate and inform across their user base.  This construct should be made up of three distinct components:

The single most important asset a travel provider has is information about their traveler’s plans. These plans must be input into a robust and dynamic environment, which provides enough logic and intelligence to leverage that data in the most comprehensive ways possible.  The platform must then be able to seamlessly pass this information to a communication engine which then enables two-­-way, real-­-time communication to and from travellers and their social networks and the travel providers.  Additional points to consider:  

a.   Leisure travel interactions must be sensitized by PR/brand conscious policies within the travel provider, to ensure that when information or content hits the social media and broader Internet, that it is well  “packaged” in the best possible light.  This is an excellent opportunity to leverage a travel agency’s brand, for example, in assisting those who have booked with them to get through a difficult situation.  

b.   Corporate travel interactions can be more rigorously controlled within the company’s social environments and their travel management companies; giving a third communication source -the company - access to this platform and ensuring the duty of care to business travelers is in place. Without the correct travel data aggregation process and messaging environment in place, businesses and travel management companies lack the ability to effectively communicate with impacted travelers - thus resulting in a significant lost opportunity to minimize costs and maximise duty of care obligations during travel disruptions.

Building a dedicated resource pool within the travel supplier’s organization will enable them to both proactively and reactively address travel disruptions, develop and implement the information dissemination strategy, and monitor and re-calibrate that strategy throughout the incident’s life cycle.

These resources should be solely focused on the task of managing the incident lifecycle, so that as and when they occur they have full engagement on the task at hand with no distractions. When “all is calm” they are constantly evaluating the potential scenarios and developing immediately implementable action plans for when things do go wrong again.  Key stakeholder alignment in this area should include:

• Risk Management

• Customer Service Department(s)

• Public Relations and External Communications

• C-Level Executives 

Embrace and allow the social media dynamic to operate as designed - with YOUR   content as the baseline - within the Social Media and Mobile Biosphere

The idea behind this is that many companies today both in travel and in other industries, often try too hard to control the information and content, which is put into the social media   ether.  When this happens, the content often comes across as too contrived or ‘rigged’ – which can actually have the opposite effect that was intended and travelers become disenfranchised with their suppliers.    

To combat this, suppliers should ensure that they disseminate news and information which is not only useful to their own customers, but also to the broader social-sphere at large. This will ensure that not only are your immediate customers looked after, but the viral nature of that information as it winds its way through social networks puts a positive spin on how your organization is managing the situation.  As an example, Figure 2 below demonstrates how this information “Biosphere” is incubated, grows and becomes able to survive and exist on its own:  

A:  An incident affects travelers, and as the the traveller reacts, the incident can grow in size, scale and complexity.  

B:  The incident also then determines the actions, reactions and/or steps taken to mitigate the impact of the incident on travel logistics and travel customers.  

C:  As travel suppliers make decisions regarding how to accommodate impacted travelers, the information, content and updates they create can be seamlessly and dynamically managed and distributed via a Social Media and Mobile Platforms within the “Biosphere.” 

D:  Impacted travelers tap into the Biosphere to receive the relevant information and content, and in parallel turn to their social/business/personal networks to cope and deal with the incident.  

E:  the Social Media and Mobile Platform manages the flow and relevance of the content being distributed out to the world of social networking and new media.

Although still grabbing media attention as though it is still a new concept, social media and   networking are no longer a fad, but rather an entrenched way of collaborating, communicating and sharing as much as mobile phones, email or texting. The impact of social media and networking is multiplied exponentially due to its natural “habitat” within mobile devices, as the lack of being connected via wires to the Internet is no longer an obstacle.  

As travelling is the ultimate form of mobility, the requirement for travel providers to master this new Biosphere of social media and mobile technology is non-negotiable, and as this White Paper has argued, the randomness of world events makes the need even greater.  Those travel companies who embrace and maximise their efforts in this space will find a far greater loyalty and engagement with their travelers than those who don’t.  And for those who don’t...that void they likely find themselves in...may be very difficult to get out of.