"In the last two or three years, social networking has changed the behavior of your travelers," said David Kunze, chief marketing officer with travel management company Atlas Travel International. "These are people who have something in common that brings them together. I don't think there's a travel agency in the country that doesn't use TripAdvisor."
Like other industry leaders of late, Kunze was urging corporate buyers in his audience--in this case, an
ACTE Regional Forum in high-tech Boston--to at least familiarize themselves with blogs and social networks.
But doing so is a challenge, and taking the social-networking pulse of a corporate-travel crowd can be a downer. Today in Boston, only a couple of among dozens of corporate buyers said they were even contemplating blogs or traveler communities. Static, occasional surveys remain the travel manager's most accessible method of capturing traveler opinions and feedback.