Travel Industry waking to the power of Blogosphere

I enjoyed this article from NYTimes about how Marriott and other hotels are starting to realize the power of customer voices using blogs. What industry has yet to wake up the voice of the customer?

The article mentions Shel Holt’s blog on travel. I’ll be seeing him at the Ragan PR conference this Thursday, interesting, I didn’t know about this blog he did.

The article states that Marriott has assigned an employee to watch the blogosphere, I know what’s that’s like

Speaking of which, I’m working with some contacts to put together a workshop/roundtable to discuss that very task. I’ve been asked to moderate or lead a discussion with some industry thought leaders, or folks that are responsible for listening to the blogosphere, more news on that to come.

Over time blog posts can get more and more focused with technologies like microformats, and mobile devices where bloggers and customers can make instant, fast, reviews about services, products, hotels, and restaurants. Scary for businesses, and empowering for customers. The voice of the customer is louder and easier to find.

More discussions on this article on Techmeme

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 19th, 2006 at 2:48 am and is filed under Social Media, Voice of the Customer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.