Tag: mobile tourism

According to the results from an Asian hotel booking website survey, smartphones are key to good vacations.

An Asian hotel booking website, Agoda.com, has conducted a study regarding travel habits and behaviors of people around the world, and what they found was that people from Asia feel that mobile technology is the most important thing to remember when on a vacation.

The majority of westerners feel the same way about remembering their credit cards.

The website held the survey online during February 2014 and involved the participation of more than 50,000 of the site’s customers. These individuals were from countries around the world and were asked what item they would least like to forget to bring on vacation with them. Asian travelers chose their mobile technology, hands down. Western travelers clearly felt different about the most important item that they would need to bring.

This helps to demonstrate the importance of mobile technology to the average person in Asia.

Among the travelers from Asia, 45 percent said that their smartphones were the one item that they would most hate to forget when going on vacation. In second place was credit cards, which were chosen by 29 percent of the votes from that region. Europeans and Americans, on the other hand, said that credit cards were more important to remember than their cell phones.

The responses from the European travelers said that credit cards were most important to 47 percent of them. Among Americans, that figure was 44 percent. Only 19 percent of respondents from Europe and North American said that mobile devices were the most important.

Survey participants from France showed the largest disparity between the importance of credit cards and mobile technology. Fifty eight percent felt that credit cards were the top thing that they would not want to forget to pack, while only 9 percent were concerned about remembering their smartphones.

In Asia, the only country that showed an exception to the rule where mobile devices came first was among the respondents from Japan. There, 38 percent chose their credit cards first while 28 percent selected their cell phones.

Social media marketing used to drive tourism

Social media has grown into a very important aspect of the marketing business. Millions of people all over the world make use of social media in some fashion, whether it be Facebook or some other platform. These platforms have opened up the way for a more dynamic form of marketing, which has been wildly successful among consumers in recent years. Social media marketing can be used for various  endeavors, including marketing campaigns coming from countries themselves.

TAT sets sights on social marketing endeavor

Thailand has launched a campaign through Facebook to boost tourism to the country. The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has taken a keen interest in social media marketing and is working to engage consumers and show them what the country has to offer, in terms of tourism. TAT has begun focusing on digital platforms in order to engage consumers due to the large number of people that own mobile devices. These consumers have responded well to social media marketing campaigns in the past and TAT believes it can capture the interests of tourists through its new social media marketing efforts.

New policies being formed for TAT

TAT has been formulating new policies and practices in order to better engage mobile consumers and make use of social networking sites. For now, the company is focusing on Facebook and Twitter, but the organization has plans to expand into new channels in the near future. These channels include Instagram, Google+, and Pintrest, all of which are platforms that have garnered a huge following among mobile consumers.

Social media marketing could provide modest economic boost for Thailand

Social media marketing could help drive more tourism to Thailand, thereby boosting local businesses and providing more clout behind this marketing approach. Social media plays a significant role in the lives of millions of people, thus the potential benefits the country could see from engaging these consumers in a dynamic way may be well worth the effort involved.