(press release) The Benelux’s largest independent travel review website Zoover started its European expansion in the UK. Zoover is the largest travel review website in the Benelux and features over 700.000 reviews of close to 150.000 accommodations worldwide. The demand for independent information about holiday destinations has grown explosively during the last years. In the Netherlands Zoover has more than 50 million visitors a year which makes it the market leader and most visited travel website in the Benelux.

Independent
One of the main priorities of Zoover is that it’s not a bookings website and therefore fully independent. Zoover operates by forging partnerships and co-operates with many international and local tour operators as a platform for informing their visitors of independent reviews.

This article is part of an ongoing project about social media used within hospitality and travel industries. Purpose of this project is defining social media and looking for examples of companies which implemented social media in their marketing efforts.

Last week Air France KLM, European based airline holding company and one of the largest airline companies worldwide, launched what they claim to be the first social network launched by the airline industry. All usual social elements such as sharing, recommendations and reviews flights, hotels, restaurants and destinations are included. Next to that, customers are able to display flights booked through Air France KLM on their profiles, find other members on the same flight and find members at similar destinations.

Should Air France KLM instead of setting up their own branded social network have collaborated with existing full featured social travel networks such as dopplr and tripit? 

Last week business oriented social network site LinkedIn launched its opensocial application platform called InApps as an answer to the similar platforms found on competing social network sites such as Myspace and Facebook. Major difference between the application platform on competing sites is the intention and quality LinkedIn is looking for with these applications; all applications will have to go through a quality assurance process before being accepted by LinkedIn and all applications are limited to business purposes.

At the launch of the platform LinkedIn is featuring several interesting applications such as a presentation sharing application from slideshare and google presentations, feed articles from Wordpress, reading list application from Amazon and several application which were developed inhouse. Also, one of the more interesting applications available at launch was a trip application from social travel website TripIt.

Following a recent move of Expedia, which is trialling using Google’s adwords’ sponsored links next to their travel search results, other major online travel agents are considering their options to further monetize their websites. According to Travolution, online travel agents have not ruled out following Expedia’s example but are also not sure of allowing competitors to advertise through their own website.

There is doubt whether sponsored links will result in increased revenues or instead result in higher exit percentages. In reality, these sponsored links have strict exclusions for competitors and thus these sponsored links will have low relevance, resulting in lower click through percentages.

With the current economic climate most travel companies are facing declining demand and uncertainty for the future. The latest forecasts in PhoCusWright’s U.S. Online Travel Overview reflect these lower expectations for travel companies’ performance. Travel companies must prepare for a downward trend as fewer people taking trips and companies being more selective towards travel expenses.

PhoCusWright projects the overall U.S. travel market is expected to increase by 4% and 2% in 2008 and 2009, respectively. These are the slowest growth rates since 2003, when the market declined by 8% following the effects of the terrorist attacks in 2001. All segments are expected to be impacted. Also, it is foreseen that in 2010 the market is expected to be recovered again.