Nineteen percent of buyers surveyed said they were directly involved with social media programs for travel, 24 percent were indirectly involved and 27 percent were not involved--while 30 percent said their companies did not offer social media tools for travel.
But more than 90 percent of respondents indicated they were involved with generally communicating to travelers, including 74 percent who noted they were directly involved. As such, social media proponents believe that the travel buyer of tomorrow needs to come to grips with this phenomenon, which is by no means a passing fad.
Travel Tech Consulting's Norm Rose said buyers should be aware of social media's impact, particularly in terms of supplier offers that circumvent policy and peer influence on service and vendor choices.
Amadeus Americas travel technology consultant for social business Michelle Batten said the large percentages of professionals not involved "confirms that the managed travel industry remains behind in their perceived significance of their travelers' social/mobile adoption and shows how far we have to go in catching up and exceeding business traveler needs in these areas."
Batten suspected that a misperception of user demographics is holding back progress at the corporate level. "The belief that social networking and mobile phones are predominantly used by the younger generations still persists, when in fact it's mid-to-upper Generation X and early Boomers who are increasingly jumping in and adopting these digital channels."
Travel buyers Michelle De Costa of Sapient and Karoline Mayr of Deltek both run social media-based communities in their firms, the former an instance of the Twitter-like Yammer service and the latter an internal blog.
"People think it's a drain on their time and there's also that fear of opening the door to complaints and creating another level of work, but it is like the water cooler," said De Costa, who on Yammer now has 2,000 co-worker followers, up from 400 two months after it launched in May. "It gives you great insight. You just have to get started and not be afraid to put something in place."
Mayr said: "It's a paradigm shift, creating a community that shares data versus pushing information to the masses. At Deltek, we use a simple internal blog to share the data and create a community of interest for those who travel and choose to participate or receive updates from the blog. This is a huge shift from push marketing or emailing the general population of employees or those who may travel. There is great opportunity in this space. Procurement benefits from targeting the communications to the correct folks who are buying travel. Employee satisfaction rises as they benefit from the great tips and discounts. Suppliers benefit from the increased market share."
At companies of all sizes, respondents who were part of dedicated travel departments tended to be more involved in social media for their programs than those in procurement or finance. That jibes with recent research by American Express, which produced the same findings.
"We think this is true because travel was one of the first 'killer apps' for social media, as travelers shared stories of their individual experiences of travel suppliers and destinations to help other travelers prepare for trips online," noted American Express Business Travel Global Advisory Services Group director of research and media Christa Degnan Manning. "Dedicated travel professionals tend to be much more industry-focused and have a genuine thirst for information on the market--not to mention typically have limited operational budgets--so they have an entrepreneurial streak to take advantage of whatever tools and outlets are available to them to support their programs and travelers.
"While there appears to be some cynicism in this [ Procurement.travel] study amongst respondents wanting more input with social media but not expecting to get it," Manning continued, "travel pros should keep in mind so much of social media out there today is freely available."
Indeed, of the 79 respondents who were not involved, only 22 percent said they expected to be and 34 percent thought they should be. Of the 88 respondents who indicated their companies did not employ such tools, 31 percent expected their companies to do so in the future while 59 percent thought their companies should do so.
Some say travel professionals ignore the trend at their risk.
"If you don't do it, you're going to be gone," said Acquis Consulting's Randy Kane, although he understands the inertia created when it's not clear "who within the company in general should be responsible for social media. I would argue that a lot of companies today that are sort of dipping their toes in the water think it's the marketing folks. Some companies think it's the sales folks. Some companies think it's nobody because it's not that important. You should short the stocks of those companies. Social media is not a buzzword. It is moving light years ahead" of traditional travel industry technology.