This short presentation summarizes my master's thesis: "The impact of social media on travel information search". This is a high level overview of the main observations, methodology and conclusions of the thesis. Here are the main research questions: What is the proportion of social media among all the other search resultsretrieved by a search engine? Which are the social media websites and their corresponding general types that are represented most prominently on the first pages of the search results? How does the social media proportion in search results vary from one page to the other? The full text version can be accessed here: bit.ly/alexpap-thesis

1. The Impact of Social Media on Online Travel SearchMaster’s thesis of Alexandros PapageorgiouTurku, 2010

2. 3 basic components of the project Web Search Social Media eTourism

3. Why these 3 areas? Social media & search engines are the most visited destinations on the web Both have a strong influence on travel decision making Travel industry is a typical early adopter of new web technologies

4. What is Social Media ? “Social media are works of user-generated content like video, audio, text or multimedia that are published and shared in a social environment, such as a blog, wiki or video sharing site.” (The Social Media Guide) Examples: General purpose Travel-specific

5. Examples of social media use in Tourism Marketing

6. Connecting the dots...Travel + Search + Social Media

7. In search of a Finnish hotel ... omenahotel

8. Multiple social media results returned

9. Key Observations

10. Key observations The majority of travelers nowadays make use of the Internet to conveniently access travel information

11. Key observations Typically, the gateway to travel information for most travelers is a web search engine

12. Key observations Social media web sites tend to appear increasingly with high rankings in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs)

13. Key observations Social media sites enjoy high credibility from consumers

14. So, exactly how high (or not) is the impact of social media on travel information search ?

15. Main research questions

16. 1. Which is the proportion of social media results upon a travel search ?

17. 2. Which are the most dominant types of travel social media?

18. 3. Which are the top social media sites represented in the search results?

19. 4. How does the social media content on search results vary across the first three pages?

20. Research Design

22. Usually the highest trip expenditure

23. Ubiquity of hotels

25. Research Design 6150 URLs were retrieved and reviewed from SERPs, involving over 100 hotel brands

26. Data collection 36 students from the E-commerce class of Åbo Akademi took part in the project by collecting and analyzing data

27. Geo: 12 cities in Finland & Greece

28. Landing pages reviewed in 3 languages

29. 4 commercial search engines deployed

30. Research Results

31. Social media have a very significant presence in the SERPs

32. Consumer review and virtual community sites, the most dominant Media Sharing Social Networks Other

33. Tripadvisor and Real Travel, the top social media sites in the sample

34. Head-torso-long tail distribution of SM sites: 7% of the unique SM domains represent 70% of the sample’s total SM results

35. Tampere and Turku hotels the most social media friendly

36. SM distribution is homogenous across the first three search pages

37. Top social media-friendly hotels

38. Conclusions

39. Conclusions Social media constitute a very significant portion of the search results and they are ubiquitous across all search pages (1-3) analyzed and all the destinations involved

40. Conclusions A handful of sites, led by Tripadvisor, are responsible for the majority of social media presence in the SERPs

41. Conclusions A striking absence was observed for the mainstream social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (this could signal a missed opportunity for travel marketers)

42. Conclusions Medium-sized destinations prove to be the most social media friendly, leaving behind popular tourist hubs

43. Marketing Recommendations Travel companies can harness the power of social media by optimizing their mix of owned, bought and earned media More details are available in section 8.4 of the thesis (p. 91-99) The full text can be downloaded here: http://bit.ly/cFVBNc

44. That’s it...

45. Aknowledgements For her continuous guidance and feedback, my supervisor, prof. Pirkko Walden For their precious ideas and comments: Zheng Xiang (N. Texas University), Jussi-Pekka Erkkola (Nokia), Kim Holmberg (Åbo Akademi), Colette Gattoni (Åbo Akademi)

46. ...and of course all the e-commerce students who took part in the project

48. Feedback: alpapag@gmail.com