Traveling and twitter have two things in common, discovery and the sharing of stories. Why not take advantage of the 140 characters you meet along the way by leaving them with something to tweet home about.
We all hear the tweets of Travelocity with their vacation ideas and cheap ticket announcements, but are we retweeting? Sure, it’s great to hear a voice behind the brand, but a story isn’t worth retelling unless we get something out of it.
Priceline has the right idea by giving their Twitter voice a name, ‘The Negotiator’ while presenting their audience with trivia questions and prizes to those with the right answers. This of course is in addition to tweets on ticket sales and correspondence to customer inquiries.
Orbitz too knows their twitter audience well by offering a chance to win a free round trip ticket to those who retweet their message.
In fact this promotion was such a hit their following numbers jumped from 2,809 to 13,853 users. Now that’s something to tweet home about!
It’s not the free stuff twitter users want (though we don’t mind), it’s the user interaction we desire. What the travel industry needs to get a grasp on when using Twitter promotions is the importance to make sure they’re give us something to talk about. We need a reason to follow them and most importantly a reason to retweet. Like traveling, our daily interactions are unpredictable. Tweet us something shocking and not only will their popularity grow, but their story may just become a twitter legacy.