Travel companies are taking the “book” out of Facebook
Skift Take
Many travel companies are removing Facebook booking apps after discovering that a conversational soft-sell in social media often is more effective than in-your-face reservations apps.
Hotels and at least one airline, Delta Air Lines, are facing up to the fact that the hoopla of recent years about how Facebook would become an increasingly popular place for travelers to book/transact their travel reservations is failing to materialize.
In its recent digital report about 57 global hotel brands, L2 Think Tank found that while 76% of the brands offered some form of booking on Facebook when it issued its 2012 report, that percentage dropped to just 52% of brands for the 2013 study.
Traffic from Facebook to the brands had decreased to 2% in the 2013 report, down from 5% in the 2012 L2 study.
Facebook feeling it
Facebook, too, is aware that brands in travel, and beyond it, are moving a
