Social media on the beach anyone?

On a recent holiday to Thailand, I suddenly realised how major a role social media plays in travel today. I realised that social media became involved as soon as I decided I was going to plan a short break.

Before I even had a clue where I was going to go I put a call out on Facebook asking for any recommendations. I got loads of responses. Who doesn't like talking about holidays after all?! When the suggestions came through I asked my friends a few questions based around the criteria I had. I then clicked through holiday photos of my friends who had suggested destinations I liked. This gave me a great sense of what their holidays were like. A 1000 words in a picture and all that.




TripAdvisor played one of the biggest social media roles in my travel experience. It started in the search phase. After I had a few destinations in mind I used TripAdvisor to find out more about hotels. A word of warning, before you sit down to start immersing yourself in the world of user generated reviews, make sure you have a few hours to spare. Or some may argue, don't even start! The reason I say that is because there are often hundreds or thousands of reviews and curiosity can get the better of you, tempting you to read way more than needed. It can also be very frustrating because you don't normally get the clear picture you were hoping for. For the number of people that love something or somewhere there are usually many who feel the complete opposite. But at this stage we are talking about unfiltered reviews by anonymous users. How relevant are they really?

One way TripAdvisor addresses this question is by allowing you to filter results based on demographics (Families, Couples, Solo, Business), date, rating, language or key words. Or for the ultimate in relevant peer reviews you can filter by your Facebook contacts.

I decided on Phuket as my holiday destination. Once I had arrived there, TripAdvisor again played a key role by helping decide where to eat out of the thousands of choices. I found lots of great options to eat and visited a few but the one I want to talk about is Cafe Siam. This cafe caught my attention for two key reasons. Firstly because the reviews were overwhelmingly positive, especially considering my earlier comment about the contradicting views you so often get. Secondly, a number of the reviewers raved about the amazing owner. They said she was helpful in recommending things to do in Phuket, prices you should pay for things, where to eat and lots of local hidden treasures.



It was decided, we were going to Cafe Siam for an indulgent breakfast and hopefully some local intel. I was successful with both objectives. It was also at Siam Cafe where I had the moment of realisation about how important social media is when you travel. Although I have discussed a bit about Facebook and TripAdvisor I also spent a lot of time looking through Youtube holiday and tourism videos, checking out reviews on other sites, and reading blogs about the best flight deals I could get.

After reflecting on this I began thinking how much I had depended on and used these sites yet I hadn't given anything back to the social media community. I also thought about how great the owner of Cafe Siam had been providing me with loads of useful information about Phuket, that as it turned out, significantly enhanced our holiday.

I decided to address both these points by creating my first ever TripAdvisor review. I thought this was a great way I could share something back with the TripAdvisor users and also show my gratitude to the Cafe Siam Owner, Sheryl. Below is a extract of the review I wrote or please click here to go to the website and see the full version.




How have you used social media for travelling or holidays? How do you think businesses can use user review sites to better to market themselves?

P.S Look out soon on YouTube for my video documenting a day in Phuket....