The true impact of social strategy

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A majority of travelers (57%) utilize social media for their trips (see Figure 1). It’s leveraged for a variety of purposes including finding ideas, general travel information, shopping, making a booking, or sharing content to their pages. This is especially common for younger age groups, with three in four travelers under 35 turning to social platforms for a recent trip. Incidence rate drops off among travelers 55+, with only 35% using social media.

Marketers often expect younger cohorts to use social media heavily and 55+ cohorts to be relatively light users. But they should also take note of the incidence rates among the middle cohort, travelers aged 35-54. Sixty-three percent of those travelers use a social platform in their trips for either planning or sharing. Social media has moved beyond the days of serving solely as a young person’s travel tool. Marketers must consider audience tastes and representation when forming both content and broader social strategies, given that the majority of the middle age group uses social platforms for travel.

The most common way to involve social media in a trip is through sharing. Sixty-two percent of social users shared content to platforms (other than YouTube) on a recent trip (see Figure 2). These posts include both permanent posts to the feed, or stories that disappear after 24 hours. For social media users, platforms are one of the most popular online resources used for finding trip ideas, second only to general search by a close margin. And the time spent engaging with travel content on social media does make an impact: 62% of social users made a specific trip decision as a result of viewing social media content.

Travelers who took cruises had the highest rate of social media usage for planning (see Figure 3). Things to see and do (tours and activities, sites and attractions) and destinations closely follow. Despite a robust presence on social platforms, lodging is the least likely travel category to be viewed by social media users. Still, nearly two in three of those who stayed in paid lodging viewed accommodations content when planning.

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