Travel is social, we travel not only to visit new places but often to reconnect with our friends and family. Social Media is a natural for travel marketers as long as it’s done in a way that is respectful of the community you’re trying to engage.

Social Media Optimization can drive a huge number of people to a website through new channels because the search engines aren’t the only place that can drive large amounts of traffic. SMO hasn’t overtaken SEO yet, but it could someday.

Travel review sites, online travel planning and collaboration sites have blossomed. Here is a rundown on 14 social travel sites that may be a good place for you to monitor or participate if the audience would be one you would also target in the offline world.

TripAdvisor (www.tripadvisor.com) attracts nearly 30 million monthly visitors (source: comScore Media Metrix, Digital Calculator Report, July 2007) across eight popular travel brands, TripAdvisor® sites, bookingbuddy.com™, cruisecritic.com™, independenttraveler.com™, seatguru.com®, smartertravel.com™, travel-library.com™ and travelpod.com™. TripAdvisor-branded sites make up the largest travel community in the world, with more than 25 million monthly visitors, five million registered members and 10 million reviews and opinions. The reviews are primarily real reviews from real travelers but some are clearly from a marketing department. TripAdvisor does allow travel suppliers to respond to criitcism which is wise to do, it often isn’t the complaint but how it’s handled that can determine if a negative review grows “legs.”.

IGOUGO (www.igougo.com) - The smallest of the big three travel review/advice sites, it currently has about 350,000 members. Like the other two sites there are advertising opportunities.

VirtualTourist (www.virtualtourist.com) Similar to TripAdvisor, it differs in that each review or tip is linked back to the member who posted the information so there is more accountability/transparency and a smaller chance that the reviews are from the marketing department. VirtualTourist, like TripAdvisor offers a number of advertising opportunities.

TripHub (www.triphub.com) allows users to create a single “hub” for all trip information and discussions, invite people and track who is coming, research and discuss travel plans and activities, collaborate on decisions and keep people informed, create a shared trip map and schedule of events, and share travel itineraries from any source or supplier. TripHub offers advertising opportunities to reach customers early in the planning cycle, and during the shopping process. Ads can also be targeted based on destination and group type.

Tripit (www.tripit.com) allows users to organize trip details into one master online itinerary — even if arrangements are booked at multiple travel sites. It automatically include maps, directions and weather, and gives the option to book restaurants, theater tickets, activities and more right from within the online itinerary. Users can safely access travel plans online, share them, check-in for flights, or print an itinerary.

WAYN (www.wayn.com) is the fastest growing travel and lifestyle social networking community website in the UK. WAYN helps you to keep track of all your contacts from around the world and make new friends based on where you are now, where you have been and where you are going!

TripWiser (www.tripwiser.com) is an intuitive way to capture trip experiences by various profiles and social factors. Users can create, customize and print multiple itineraries, upload photos, write and share with close friends and the broader community.

TripTie (www.triptie.com) is an online community of travelers, all devoted to planning and sharing their trips. Members plan and store their itineraries, then you take the best pieces of them and create your own. Share your favorite places, travel tips, to-brings, photos, stories, and more.

YOWtrip (www.yowtrip.com) allows single travelers to find others going on similar trips.

I’m In! (www.imin.com) is a social media site for organizing travel with friends. It has unique trip ideas, private planning pages, and a place to share memories and trip details.

TripConnect (www.tripconnect.com) is an online service that allows people to get travel advice from people they know, others who share similar interests, and also from established and relevant information sources. The company’s mission is to help people with the process of choosing travel destinations and hotels by presenting them with the most useful sources of information: those that they trust and those that are most relevant to their tastes and interests.

Groople (www.groople.com) is a online group travel agency dedicated to simplifying the otherwise difficult task of planning travel for your group.

UpTake (www.uptake.com) is a travel information search engine - your first step to deciding where to go, where to stay or what to do. We’re here to help you make informed decisions about what best fits your travel preferences.

My Life of Travel (www.mylifeoftravel.com)is a free web-based travel journal and travel research tool that lets travellers record their journeys, map travel histories, share tips with fellow tourists and keep in touch with friends and family, without the need for mass email communication and photo sharing sites.

If you are interested in a social media campign for your travel site please feel free to contact us at 518-370-8092 or fill out a contact form.

Air France and KLM are to jointly launch bluenity.com, described as the first social network website for all air travellers to get answers to questions such as:

Who am I flying with on my next flight? Where can I get the best addresses for business and leisure anywhere in the world?

Claiming ot be the first social network website for all air travellers, you can Sign up with bluenity.com and share your top tips for hotels, restaurants and shopping anywhere in the world. Bluenity.com is unique in that it allows customers of both the airlines to make their flight schedule public and to get an update from other travellers about their flight arrangements. This means that travellers can meet online before they travel to arrange to share a taxi, for example, or to meet up in a lounge.

Bluenity is available in three languages (French, English and Dutch), and was designed in partnership with Tripnity.

According to compete.com, general search traffic year over year is up, lead by search giant Google.

And traffic to hotel aggregator sites has increased as well.

If you haven’t seen your online traffic or sales increase year over year it may be time for a site review along with a fresh look at the terms you are targeting.

While the head terms will provide a lot of traffic, often the longer tail terms provide the best conversion rate.

The Traditional concept of leading the customer through the front door, or home page of a website and having them search for specific terms to find the lodging of their choice is not the experience a growing number of travel customers are searching for.  According to compete, over the past 20 months there has been a steep upward trend in travelers searching for specific properties and coming into websites via property pages rather than the homepage.

Large aggregator websites should optimize their property pages for both search engines and human visitor as they are increasingly the first introduction to a website a visitor may have.

Feel free to contact us at Propel Media for more information regarding Search Engine Optimization