Travel Sites and Social Media

I was researching (for a class assignment) social media sites and the differences between them and let's face it, almost every large company is using some form of social media. The differences between them are how well they are using it and interacting with their customers on it. 

As I sat here today and looked outside all I could think about is how nice it would be to getaway from this cold, wet, and dreary Wisconsin weather. So I chose Funjet Vacations and Apple Vacations. Both are using Facebook and Twitter besides their own websites. Both companies offer vacation packages to pretty much the same places and some of the very same hotels and airlines are offered. They are both competing for my vacation budget in hopes that I will book a vacation through them. 


Facebook:

Funjet joined January 30, 2009   92,017 likes · 4,151 talking about this

Apple joined February 17, 2009  60,858 likes · 2,412 talking about this

Funjet has more likes and more people are talking about them vs. Apple as you can see but the differences between their pages is the content. They both have pictures of vacation spots and beaches on their pages. Funjet does a lot of interaction with their customers and offers discounts as well as promotions and sweepstakes from their Facebook page and encourages fans to post pictures there too. Apple has more links to their other pages such as their blog which reads more like a travel brochure than a regular blog. Apple also has a few moderators listed on their Facebook page and a live chat option. I did like that they post job openings on their page via a link to Monster. Both of them post daily on their pages and make sure to monitor their pages for any questions or problems customers have. I did notice that Funjet gives away tee-shirts to people who post pictures that they like so great job on their promotions today alone I saw three tee-shirts given away. They also had a goal (that was reached today) of 92,000 fans so they are randomly giving away 20 $300 off coupons to fans.

Twitter:

Funjet has 13,920 followers, is following 2,586 and has tweeted 2,844

Apple has 44,434 followers, is following 734 and has tweeted 4,723

As you can see Apple has done a better job with getting more followers than Funjet on Twitter. Both companies are posting daily to their pages with sales, travel advice, promotions to different places and resorts. I believe the difference is in the interactions with their fans/followers. Using social media allows both companies to give a more personal response to customers while still forwarding them to their sales on the destinations that they go to. Asking the fans for interactions such as posting to their pages or entering sweepstakes or even re-tweeting their posts allows for more people to see a sale or a spot and want to find out more information about them. Let's face it if you see a deal and you have the finances & time to go somewhere why wouldn't you? What company offered the deal to you? That is who you would book your trip through as all of the work is completed for you. 

As a customer who is responsible with her money, I would research both companies to see which would offer the better deal on the destination I want to go to. In all reality I have used both companies and love them both but, I honestly feel that Funjet is doing a better job of interacting with their customers. They also send out a ton of emails if you've signed up for their email list (so I recommend using a junk email account and check it out when you want to instead of being flooded by emails offering you deals to places when you can't go like now during school summer will be here soon enough). If one over the other sent me a coupon or offered a discount that would be a deciding factor as they both price match when possible.

https://www.facebook.com/funjetvacations
https://www.facebook.com/applevacations
https://twitter.com/FunjetVacations
https://twitter.com/AppleVacations