Lets talk Pinterest today. Specifically – how Pinterest is going to influence travel industry. This post isn’t about – how pinterest works, review of pinterest.

Pinterest was launched as a closed group beta in March 2010. Soon, it went viral and won multiple awards – including TechCrunch’s Best New Startup of 2011. It was reported that the user adoption rate of Pinterest is higher than that of Facebook (when it was launched in 2004 days). That’s the power of pinterest.

Now, do travel companies have to worry about Pinterest? Does Pinterest going to change the way travellers plan their holidays? The clear answer is – Yes. Lets explore.

How different is Pinterest from Facebook, Twitter?

Pinterest is a totally different platform than Facebook, Twitter. Facebook is meant for customer interaction, promotion, issue resolution. Twitter is mainly for promotions/deals. Pinterest is mainly for promotions/deals, lead generation, experience sharing by customers.

1. Companies can create a Pinterest account and create multiple boards. Example: Restaurant Board, Rooms Board, Bar Board, Attractions Board, Deals Board, Discounts Board. Every post is a “pin” to these boards. Customers can repin a particular board (Ex: Deals Board) or a pin to his/her board.

2. Customers can create various travel related boards. Example: Travel – India, Travel – Outside India, Reservation Websites, Weekend Getaways to organize and plan their travel. A friend of the customer can repin into his/her board and its a chain reaction.

3. Companies should ensure they attach new pins everyday to their board. Keeping the boards fresh is going to be the key. Content is king, agreed. But, “fresh content” is the new king!

4. Pinterest is all about pictures, even the text information is uploaded as a picture (pin). As the saying goes – A picture is equivalent to 1000 words – its highly important that companies put on their creative hat in generating attractive and innovative picture to represent / convey information.

5. There is also a “video” section. This is like a mini-YouTube inside Pinterest. Again, creativity should play a major role here. Come up with a viral video about your facility (Ex: Restaurant’s cuisine, Airline’s Loyalty Program) and post it in Pinterest.

6. Companies should ensure all their property (hotel, flight, car etc) pages have “Pin This!” pin for customers to pin to their boards. It’s similar to Facebook’s “Like” button.

7. Customers can share their trip pictures in their boards. Example: Trip to Barcelona, with 10 pictures (pins) uploaded.

Given above points, its very evident that Pinterest is going to play a major role in travel industry – both from enterprise & customer perspective. Enterprises have yet another new and untapped channel to market and attract customers. Customers have a good platform to organize, plan and share their travel trips. But, how soon the industry is going to adopt this new social channel is a wait and watch situation.

Light Note: If companies are smart enough, they will come up with Pins & Boards that are more appealing towards women. Google quickly to see which gender is most active in Pinterest Ok, we will give you the number. More than 80% of active users in Pinterest are women