Want to reach web-savvy consumers? Time to start social networking

Winners of Fly on US promotion spend time on Facebook and want more Web engagement.

The overseas winners of the Singapore Tourism Board's (STB) Fly on US online promotion represent a new breed of digital savvy consumers who spend a lot of time on social networking sites like Facebook, where the competition was also run.

Yap Cheok Hao, one of the winners from Malaysia, told P@SSPORT that he was a relatively frequent user of Facebook, using it to keep in touch and updated with his network of friends.

However, he said, up to now, he hadn't found Facebook a particularly useful site to "find out about information related to travel and places".

He heard of the STB competition through friends, and decided to take part. "In my opinion using the Internet in general is an excellent idea to promote tourism in Singapore - seeing that we're living in an increasingly high-tech era and obviously more and more of the world's population is becoming computer-literate."

"Thus, this idea is a good complement to other parallel efforts to 'put Singapore on the world map', metaphorically speaking."

The growing power of social networking sites

• In the US, the share of adult Internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years - from eight per cent in 2005 to 35 per cent now, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project's December 2008 tracking survey.
  
• Facebook boasts more than 200 million active users, of whom more than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day. The fastest growing demographic is represented by people 35 years old and older.
  
• 51.com experiences 14 million unique visits per week and is the top social networking site in China, according to a study carried out by CR-Nielsen from 1 December till 28 December 2008.
  
• Visitation to social networking sites in India increased 51 per cent from the previous year to more than 19 million visitors in December 2008, a comScore report in February 2009 noted. The study also found that global social networking brands continued to gain prominence in India during the year, with Orkut, Facebook, hi5, LinkedIn and MySpace each witnessing significant increases in visitation.

Fly on US welcomed by web users

The STB ran the Fly on US promotion from March to May 31, 2009, and more than 235,000 invitations were sent out globally through the visitsingapore.com online portal and its Facebook application since its official launch.

The Fly on US competition was run as part of the "2009 Reasons to enjoy Singapore" initiative. Participants logged onto www.visitsingapore.com/flyonus or the Facebook application to invite their friends and family onboard the virtual Uniquely Singapore flight. Every qualified 2,009th name won a pair of return air tickets to Singapore.

It announced the first two winners on March 9 - Mrs Nirupama Bhat, a 44-year-old deputy manager at the State Bank of India from Mumbai, and Mr Shi Jianghao, a 28-year-old Commerce manager in Hong Kong.

Mr Chew Tiong Heng, Director, Destination Marketing, at the STB, said it was the first time the STB was leveraging online platforms in such a big way.

"This promotion ties in nicely with the trend of increasing number of free independent travellers (FIT) that we are seeing. These travellers are very internet-savvy, doing research and making their travel arrangements online. We expect this promotion to especially appeal to this segment of travellers."

Other winners contacted by P@SSPORT all said they spend a lot of time online and on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter and welcomed online promotions such as the one conducted by the STB.

Sonal Roy from India said, "I think it's really a very good idea to use Facebook and the internet as you can reach a very wide range of people rather than the conventional way of conducting a competition."

Li Lei of Guangzhou called it a "wonderful idea". The Internet has become a very important part of young people's lives and he said he was also a frequent user of sites such as Ctrip.com, China's top online travel portal.

Jia Hui Ying of Beijing, China, agreed that the Internet was a good way of reaching out to younger consumers.

More ways to engage potential visitors

All offered suggestions on how tourism boards like the STB could use the Internet even more to engage with Web-savvy consumers like themselves. Sonal Roy said, "Make small games like Treasure Hunt in Singapore on your website and stuff and, yes, make the process as simple as possible and as short as possible. After all, we are on Internet to save time."

Li Lei asked for more details about tourist attractions - how to reach them, pricing and benefits - and added a request for a Bulletin Board System (BBS) to allow for better communication and a way of accessing useful travel information.

Cheok Hao suggested the use of YouTube. "Posting cool videos would most definitely help if they catch the attention of its global viewers. This may be expanded to a video-making competition perhaps?"