Social media and marketing trends

Is Facebook losing share to TikTok? When it comes to sales and marketing, free social media remains king: This year, 68% of respondents ranked it their top sales and marketing platform, over email, website marketing, events and e-newsletters. 

And there’s no question that Facebook is still the dominant social media platform: 80% of respondents use it to promote their agency and sell travel. But there’s a newcomer on the rise: TikTok. Last year only 6% of respondents said they used it to sell travel, but this year that number more than doubled, to 13%. 

Meanwhile, some social networks are losing steam. Facebook is huge but is down from a whopping 98% last year, while Instagram dropped below the 50% mark for the first time since 2019 and LinkedIn was off 10 percentage points from last year. 

Home-based advisors and ICs prefer Facebook and Instagram, but Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok rank higher for traditional agencies. This could be because a single advisor might focus on one or two specific channels, while a traditional agency may have more resources to devote to additional platforms and the resources to film and produce video content for YouTube and TikTok.

—Rebecca Tobin

Email and phone remain the top choices for communicating with clients, but younger travel advisors (age 35 and under) are less likely to use those traditional channels, instead opting for chat and messaging apps. And despite its pandemic popularity, videoconferencing is not a favorite among any age group, with advisors far and away opting for traditional phone calls.

When looking for new clients, email is the dominant way to acquire them. But while independent advisors and agency owners are almost as likely to use their website and free social media for marketing, agency employees do that to a much lesser extent.

—Johanna Jainchill