According to Skift’s State of Travel 2024, social media is the preferred online source for trip planning for 32% of travelers, ahead of official sites, Google, review sites, travel influencers, offline sources like friends and family, etc. Stelico Consulting Group survey found out that 76% of US luxury travelers selected a hotel brand, cruise line, or airline based on social media.

Indeed, social media plays an important role in the Dreaming and Planning Phases of the digital customer journey to engage and intrigue potential customers, inform them of your property’s value proposition, services and amenities, news and offerings about your destination, etc.

In other words, social media is a very important customer engagement channel. If hoteliers do an excellent job in this channel, they will be able to inform, intrigue and engage potential customers in the Dreaming and Planning Phases and steer them toward the Booking Engine of the digital customer journey.

But is social media a distribution channel as some in our industry insist? We had heated discussions on the subject back in 2005-2008. Recently a new crop of enthusiasts are claiming that social media has not yet become an important distribution channel only because hoteliers and other travel companies have not identified it as an interesting revenue stream.

Hospitality has been trying very hard to turn social media into a distribution channel all the way since 2005. For 20 years now! We tried social commerce and all of the tricks of the trade: hotel mini-sites, booking engine widgets (when Facebook and the other social platforms allowed it), SEO, exclusive social media promotions, packages and discounts, content marketing, paid advertising, similar audience marketing, etc.

In other words, social commerce/social selling is not some new initiative and has existed for two decades now. Guess what percentage of hotel bookings come from social commerce? 50%? 30%? 20%? 10%? 5%? Nah, less than 1% of hotel bookings today can be attributed somehow as referrals from social media.

Coming with fancy names like “social commerce” won’t turn social media into a distribution channel. Since 2005, it has been long enough time to “train” the traveling public to use social media as a booking channel. Oh, boy, didn’t hospitality try very hard all those years to do just that and failed miserably!

Social media affects travel planning, no doubt about it. But so do the search engines. Review sites. Metasearch. AI search. Display advertising. TV. Word-of-mouth. The question is, in which phase of the digital customer journey is the influence of social media most impactful? The last 20 years have given us the answer: in the Dreaming and Planning Phases, not in the Booking Phase.

At my former company NextGuest, now part of Cendyn, we had the first social media marketing department in hospitality. Before Marriott and Hilton. We were THE pioneers in social media in hospitality. We handled social media marketing for many of our clients, and we handled the technology aspect of their social media presence for all of them: property profiles and mini sites, booking engine widgets, special offers sections, destination guides, etc.

And yes, of course, we tracked conversions (bookings/roomnights/revenue) with the most sophisticated analytical software in the market. We were the agency of record for 3 global hotel brands. And we did this for two decades. The result? Great brand engagements, no doubt, but occasional bookings here and there. In spite of all the efforts and marketing spend.

Why? Social media is not perceived as a booking channel by the traveling public. An engagement channel in the Dreaming and Planning Phases of the digital customer journey- yes, by all means! A booking channel – no! Booking travel is far, far more complex than that.

In hospitality the digital customer journey is like a meandering river and goes through 48 touchpoints (Google Research) – hotel websites, OTAs, apps, search engines, social media platforms, AI search, metasearch sites, online travel and destination guides, review sites, etc. – before the customer makes a hotel booking.