Travel purchases had moved from high relationship (travel agencies) to highly transactional (online travel, Expedia.com etc) and now has swung into another state, centred on social networks.

In the past year, US online leisure travelers’ use of Social Computing technologies such as blogs, RSS, and user reviews for researching travel has skyrocketed.

Attention travel eBusiness and marketing executives and managers: Social Computing must play some role in your online strategy, even if all you do is monitor what travelers say about your brands on third-party forums.

Those implementing Social Computing technologies on their own Web sites need to view it as primarily supporting business goals like improving customer communication or increasing engagement, and less as a sales or customer service tool.

Source: Forrester Research: Travelers Embrace Social Computing Technologies

Banks would do well to consider the parallels:

	Travel	Bank
Old way	Travel agency	Bank branch
last 10 years – transactional automation	Online booking	online banking
Newest	Social networks for advice, then online booking	??

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Its only a matter of time for the ?? blank to be filled in.