Orbitz is the latest travel company to jump on the social media bandwagon according to an article in the New York Times. The Orbitz site now features Traveler Update, which is meant to help visitors make travelers share tips and ideas to make airline travel a little easier.
“This is an engagement tool for us,” said Randy Susan Wagner, the company’s chief marketing officer. “Instead of Orbitz just throwing customers a lifeline with the information we offer, we’re allowing travelers to throw lifelines to others.”
Orbitz is hoping to generate interest in the section by providing other new information, like maps that show airport delays, the pace of highway traffic near major airports and average wait times at airport security check points. Adjacent to those is a link, labeled “create a new traveler update,” where users are prompted to sign in and post something brief, and choose a thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon describing the nature of their news.
To entice users to post, Ms. Wagner said Orbitz would rank contributors, based on how often readers deemed the postings helpful, and offer discounts on future bookings for the best contributors. Orbitz will also market the service through e-mail to its users, hundreds of whom populate the nation’s busiest airports every hour.
Will it work? Well Orbitz is not the only travel site that is trying social networking. Expedia.com last month introduced a MySpace page allowing customers to share their travel experiences, and win a vacation. Travelocity and Priceline have also created MySpace pages. Customer reviews and feedbacks work great for hotels, but I think that the majority of flyers base their airline decision more on price and available choices. I cannot see a lot of travelers going to Orbitz more often because they have great tips on how to avoid the traffic going to Boston’s Logan airport.
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