Eleven years after the founding of Facebook and nine years after Twitter debuted, the travel industry is well-versed in social media, right? Wrong. At least that is the view espoused by members of a social media panel at the World Travel & Tourism Council's Global Summit in Madrid, Spain. Moderated by Skift's CEO and founder Rafat Ali, panel members seemed to agree that the travel industry still doesn't understand social media and isn't using various platforms to their fullest potentials. Panellists included the president and CEO of Orbitz Worldwide and John O'Sullivan, the managing director of Tourism Australia. Some 23% of the audience members polled during the panel indicated that 20% to 50% of their marketing and communications budgets will account for spending on social media during the next five years.

Via Tourism Australia