What Facebook's Popularity Means for Online Travel

Recently the online media (Experian Hitwise)) reported that Facebook has Google.com as the most popular website in US. Facebook accounted for 7.08% of all US websites visits for the week ending March 13th, compared with Google 7.03% share (#3 is Yahoo - 3.8%).
Needless to say, the travel industry was abuzz with this news. Questions like "Is Facebook going to replace Google?" and "Are we missing big revenue opportunities by not advertising on Facebook" tossed around.
The answer is that Facebook is not going to replace Google as a travel planning tool nytime soon. Here are the reasons why:

_When people want to buy books online they go to Amazon

_When people want to buy new laptops online they go to Dell.com, Apple.com or BestBuy.com

_When people plan to travel they go to:

• Search Engine (Google, Yahoo)
• Online Travel Agencies (OTA's): Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline
• Major hotel brand websites (Mariott.com, Hilton.com etc)
• Indipendent/boutique/luxury hotel websites
• Consumer review sites(Tripadvisor.com).

84% of Americans plan travel online using the above approaches. I other words, soxial networks re not the first options that come to mind when planning a business trip or family vacation. Many travel consumer surveys attest to the above behavior, time and again.