UKnetmonitor has picked up some research we did earlier this year on the UK travel industry.
Their article is titled 'Influence of blogs on consumers' - which is slightly misleading... what we were really looking at was the impact of user review sites like TripAdvisor on purchases of flights and holidays.
This was primary research with consumers and a decent sized sample of 600+ responses. Headline findings were that although consumers used a wide range of information sources, review sites like TripAdvisor were the single most trusted reference.
Also interesting that the more frequently people travel, the greater they trust independent review sites. And - rather depressingly for the travel industry - the more they travel, the less they trust the information provided by holiday companies.
One thing I'm interested in - and where we may do further research - is whether social networks like Facebook will become even more influential than vertically-based review sites. The logic goes 'I value the opinions of other people, but I particularly value the opinions of my friends and peer group'.
Quite right. The heading should have referred to consumer generated comment. Now changed. Our apologies.
The suggestion of more research into “whether social networks like Facebook will become even more influential than vertically-based review sites ” is interesting. Looking across all forms of user generated comment: social networks, blogs, discussion forums and so on, the thing that strikes us is that comment on, for example airlines, can be found in the most unexpected places - motorbike forums, parenting chat rooms, golfers blogs, you name it, as well as on the well known travel review sites. Whether this is more influential is open to question, but there may be some truth in the notion that when seeking opinion on an airline, for example, a customer is more likely to be influenced by the views of a fellow like-minded golfer (mother/biker), than simply another flyer. Also more likely to post an opinion in a discussion forum they habitually use, than one they refer to only once or twice a year.