Our friends at Mango PR talk about UK Social Media Trends

The Mangos have been lucky enough to recently attend a social media forum where travel experts from Google gave us insight into the latest online travel trends. What with Pure France being a web-based company we were delighted to see the rapid shift to online research and booking.

Here are google’s findings….

....85% of people use the web for researching and booking holidays

....On average people cover 22 site visits across 9.5 sessions before booking. This just confirms the importance we place on online and social media – whether it is Pure France that secures the final booking or not, one of those 22 site visits / review reads could be ours and helps to raise brand awareness / spark word of mouth recommendations

Going Mobile:
This is the next step for the internet and is growing rapidly (see geeky graph below). There has been a 1,200% year-on-year growth in mobile travel searches which closely matches the figures that were first seen when google launched so it looks like mobile internet is the future.

The following datagraphic also sparked our interest. It shows just how far Facebook now stretches – a staggering 26 million users in the UK alone! These kinds of number just re-enforce the importance of a social media presence in 2011.
The final golden nugget from the social media forum discussed the rise of video and its power in bringing travel to life on-line. With YouTube now the second most searched engine, it is becoming hard to ignore….

As time goes on and video content becomes less and less expensive to film, the travel industry is taking note. So, is this the next steps for Pure France….watch this spa…

Here is a lovely video which shows the power of video when looking to build a brand reputation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW5Xo4QrSBw