After receiving over 30,000 votes in just two weeks from airline fans all over the world, we are pleased to announce the finalists for the 2nd Annual SimpliFlying Awards in Social Media Excellence, to be held at the EyeforTravel Online Marketing and Social Media Summit on Oct 10 in Amsterdam.

The most voted category was the “Best airline in social media”, with over 7,200 votes. This was followed by the best airline use of social media to drive customer service (6800+ votes) and revenue (6600+ votes). The best airports category received over 5,000 votes and the best hotels category received over 4,400 votes, thanks to our partnership with the Hotel Marketing Strategies blog.  

One representative from the Top 3 most voted in each category will get a free pass to attend the EyeforTravel Online Marketing and Social Media Summit on Oct 10 in Amsterdam, and a 20% discount for their colleagues.

A distinguished panel of judges (to be announced shortly) will determine the winner after the presentations and they will be declared on the evening of Oct 10.

Congratulations to all the finalists, as …

Yesterday, we posted a case-pack on the Best Airlines in Social Media. Today, completing our roundup of the top nominees in the airlines/airports category of this year’s SimpliFlying Awards for Social Media Excellence, we’re bringing you the Top 5 Airports in Social Media as nominated for the awards.
We’ve already recounted how the response to these awards has been huge and humbling at the same time: over 30,000 votes from 4500+ cities is a good enough reason to make our hearts swell with pride.
But today is special: it’s the last day of voting so if you haven’t yet voted for your favourite airline or airport, now’s the time to make amends. Voting closes at 5 pm PDT today.
You can also go through our other case-packs on the Best Airlines Driving Revenue and the Best Airlines Driving Customer Engagement and Crisis Management.
Meanwhile, you can check out the latest standings and vote for this particular category below:

Best Airport in Social Media
Before we jump into the case-pack, here are a few takeaways from these categories:

Airports are keen to ensure that passengers who travel through them …

Would you believe it? Only a few days ago, while releasing the case-pack for the Best Airlines Driving Customer Service and Crisis Management we had reported that the total votes for the 2nd SimpliFlying Awards for Excellence in Social Media had crossed 12,000 in just about a week! We also mentioned how votes had been received from more than 2,500 cities across the world. But today, we have updated figures for you, and we request you to hold your breath!
With about a day still to go for voting (and trust us, a lot of votes come in on the last day), the total number of votes has already crossed 30,000. Moreover, votes have come in from 4500+ cities across the world. How incredibly awesome is that?
Yes, while you gather words and your breath to answer that, this would be a good time to remind you that only a day is left for voting so you can still vote for your favorite airline if you haven’t done so. Do vote if you care about the airline you love! Meanwhile, you can check out the latest result for the current category below. All voting closes September 15….

I had the pleasure of presenting at the APEX 2011 Summit in Seattle this week. I was opening the social media Education Track with a presentation that aimed to set the tone for the rest of the day – and worthy speakers to follow. Hence, I focused on the road ahead for social media at airlines.

There were four key themes I highlighted on how social media will impact airlines in the coming months:

The availability of in-flight wifi to 200 million people this year would change customer engagement models
Loyalty programs would evolve to include social loyalty, where virtual actions lead to virtual rewards, like badges, rather than just free flights
Revenue and distribution would adapt to the social graph to skip the GDS, like the Malaysia Airlines Facebook booking app, or Alaska Airline’s FlyingSocial
Customer service will evolve where people expect to do all actions through social media, that they now do over the phone with an airline. Hence our partnership with InterGlobe Technologies to launch a social media call center

Check out these trends and more, in the presentation embedded below (Flash required)….

SimpliFlying is back with the  Monthly Twitter Report for airlines (in partnership with Eezeer) for August 2011 in continuation with our coverage and analysis of the dynamic social media landscape for airlines.
After close to 6 months of reporting monthly on how airlines are using Twitter, we can safely say that apart from Facebook, Twitter is the social media platform of choice for most airlines. The number of tweets sent and received has been rising in general for months in a row. Airlines have also become more forthcoming as well as responsive.
This month, while the usual suspects (Delta and JetBlue) are once again on the list of top engagers, Cebu Pacific absolutely storms into the list. Not only is it placed second on the list of airlines receiving the most number of public tweets, it also scores the highest in the Global Satisfaction Score with a score of 106.7. (For more details, see the infographic.)
A number of facts are immediately clear from this report:

As we’ve mentioned, Cebu Pacific is second on the list of airlines receiving the most number of public tweets with more than 11,000 to its name. However, Delta Air Lines is once …

Well, well, well! This year’s race for the 2nd SimpliFlying Awards for Excellence in Social Media is heating up like never before. Our awards are not just featured on the homepages of Malaysia Airlines and Air New Zealand but have gained huge traction on the web as well. Just about a week into voting, the total number of votes has already crossed 12,000!

Votes, as we mentioned in the previous slide-deck on the Best Airlines Driving Revenue through Social Media, have come from around 2500 cities across the world. We promised recently that we’d regularly post case-packs illustrating the fabulous campaigns that have led the final nominees to be shortlisted. And we’re back this time with another 5 great case-studies on how 5 of the best airlines in the world have used social media to drive Customer Service and Crisis Management.

This would be a good time to remind you that voting is still ongoing so you can vote for your favorite airline until 15th September. Do vote if you care about the airline you love! Meanwhile, you can check out the latest result for the current category below.

Best use of social …

Welcome to Twitter, Singapore Airlines (SQ). And Facebook too! Welcome to the Branding 2.0, where a brand is not what you say it is, it’s what they say is.

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, possibly the last major airline brand (see AdAge article) has just caught the wind about engaging customers through social media and began their new journey by first taking over a existing Facebook fanpage with over 100,000 fans, which was started by a real fan in 2006, and setting up a new Twitter account. All this happened on Sept 5, 2011 – over two years after we wrote here in May 2009, “why time is running out for the Singapore Airlines brand to get into Web 2.0″.

Better late than never. They have the advantage of learning from the mistakes of others, but at the same time need to match high expectations set by worthy competitors like AirAsia, Cathay Pacific and Qantas. So, now what?

Twelve things Singapore Airlines needs to do social media right

“Just because you built it doesn’t mean …

The buzz is palpable! After a heady round of nominations (69 nominees in 10 days) we’re down to the fun bit – the real voting to shortlist the Top 3 who’ll be invited to Amsterdam on October 10th for the 2nd Annual SimpliFlying Awards for Excellence in Social Media. Amazingly, we received more than 5000 votes in the first 36 hours from more than 1400 cities across the world. Huge, huge numbers! And they’re growing astronomically each day!

To acquaint you better with the nominees in each category of the awards, we’ll be posting case-packs on our SlideShare channel for each of the 5 categories of awards detailing what makes each nominee so special and why they’re in the final list of nominees (the initial list had over 60 candidates!). The campaigns that clinched each airline its position of prestige will be illustrated in detail. We hope you enjoy going through them and revelling in the reflected brilliance of their innovativeness, cleverness and sheer chutzpah.

The first case-pack has 5 case-studies, each illumninating the campaigns of Top 5 nominees in the category “Best use of Social Media to drive Revenue”. As you’ll see, some, like Virgin America jumped …

I’ve done a lot of speaking recently at Eyefortravel events – which are focused on travel and technology. They’ve put out a report on social media and mobile use in travel, based on a survey of their conference attendees. And based on the findings of that report, produced an infographic full of amazing statistics. And we’re proud to be the first to share it here on SimpliFlying.

Hope you enjoy this infographic as much as the one we had previously shared, about how travelers use mobile while during the journey.

As I checked in on Foursquare at Washington Dulles Airport this morning on my way to Chicago, I couldn’t help but notice the following display at one of the idle United gates:

In light of the article I wrote in this space a few months ago, I must say I was quite proud. Since I wrote that first article, UA has merged their Twitter presence with Continental (and are actually still tweeting from both), but it’s nice to see them complete the message by including the Twitter handle this time. Glad somebody’s paying attention…and well done, United!
This is how it looked previously on their napkins!