It’s official, Facebook has taken over the mantle of the most talked about company on the web, and no more so than in the marketing and e-commerce departments of travel companies. Why? Because web savvy travel businesses are busy embracing web 2.0, and ignoring Facebook in their social media strategy would be like ignoring Google in their search strategy. Whether we like it or not, Facebook already has a huge influence on the decision making and purchasing behaviour of online travellers. If you sell travel on the web then you need to understand how Facebook plans to let you reach its audience, how much it is likely to cost and how you can make ‘social’ marketing and distribution pay.

On 20 May at EyeforTravel’s 2008 Travel Distribution Summit Blake Chandlee, recently appointed head of Facebook’s UK business, will present his views on how the travel industry can exploit social distribution and reach out to the fast growing and influential audiences created by social networking sites. He will be speaking on a keynote debate at the event focused on how travel companies can monetise web 2.0 and will be joined by a diverse group of industry experts, including Ian McCaig, CEO, lastminute.com; Daniel Robb, UK Head of Travel, Google; Richard Lewis, President, Jebel Ali Hotels and Tom Griffiths, Founder of gapyear.com.

As one would expect from the head of the UK’s original online travel company, Ian has plenty of positive things to say about web 2.0 and will talking about how he sees original Web travel companies evolving into leading arenas for social media and user generated content. Similarly, gapyear.com founder Tom Griffiths is a great advocate of social networking as a means of bringing like minded travellers together. So much so in fact that he has used it to create one of the web’s biggest communities of travellers. Tom will be sharing his experiences and discussing the benefits and challenges of creating and maintaining such a huge online community.

However, web 2.0 is not all a bed of roses. By enabling travellers to share bad experiences as well as good, social networks and blogs can pose a serious threat to your brand and reputation. Richard Lewis, recently appointed president of Jebel Ali International Hotels will be playing the devil’s advocate in the debate. Whilst not against social media, he sees the inherent dangers associated with the openness it provides and will be using real life examples to show what can happen when social sites get nasty. He will also be highlighting some of the privacy and security issues associated with open source, and sounding a note of caution about Google’s dominance of all things internet.

To find out more about this debate, and to see the full agenda and speaker list for the 2008 Travel Distribution Summit, visit the website at