Social media engagement for the travel agency community skyrocketed in 2018: according to new research from travel technology solutions provider Passport Online, engagement on social media channels was up over 100 percent last year over the previous year.
Passport Online based its research on its internal data, which covers more than 7,500 travel agencies who use the company’s tools to manage their digital footprint across websites, social media and email marketing. All told, Passport Online works with more than 30,000 travel advisors in partnerships with a number of industry consortia and host agencies, as well as hundreds of independent agencies.
Also of note: The use of digital booking tools to complete b-to-b transactions rose significantly in 2018, based on an analysis of Passport Online’s booking engine customers. For the full year, bookings generated on the company’s Tandem cruise booking engine were up 25 percent year-over-year.
In the email marketing channel, the average agency customer database spiked in 2018 from an average of 1,000 names to just under 4,000 names, Passport Online said. The company also noted that email remains the number one marketing method for travel agencies, per other research from Phocuswright.
Other news to note from Passport’s analysis of its ESP Facebook Posting service customers includes a whopping 170 percent increase in consumer comments on agencies’ Facebook pages, plus a 110 percent increase in shares and a nearly 75 percent increase in clicks.
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