Report: Marriott Most-Loved Travel, Hospitality Brand of Year

SANTA CLARA, CA—NetBase, an enterprise social analytics company, has released its annual “Social Media Industry Report 2018 Travel and Hospitality.” The report leveraged NetBase’s social analytics technology to examine the most popular brands across five categories including, airlines, car rental, cruise lines, hotels and travel sites.

“Social media plays an extensive role in how customers feel about travel and hospitality brands, and where they choose to spend their vacation time,” said Paige Leidig, chief marketing officer at NetBase. “Most consumers have a limited amount of vacation time and turn to social media for recommendations. We analyzed, translated and packaged these social conversations into digestible insights, helping travel and hospitality brands to better communicate with consumers and ultimately motivate them to love and trust their brands.”

Most-Loved Travel and Hospitality Brands

  1. Marriott (1)
  2. Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts (2)
  3. Hilton (3)
  4. Airbnb (3)
  5. American Airlines (3)
  6. Royal Caribbean Cruises (4)
  7. JetBlue (5)
  8. Southwest Airlines (5)
  9. United Airlines (6)
  10. Singapore Airlines (7)
  11. Delta Airlines (7)
  12. Cathay Pacific Airlines (8)
  13. The Ritz-Carlton (9)
  14. Hyatt (10)
  15. Qantas Airlines (10)

The most popular brands by category are:

  • Hotels: Marriott (1) and Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts (2)
  • Travel Sites: Airbnb (3) and TripAdvisor (12)
  • Airlines: American Airlines (3) and JetBlue & Southwest (5), United Airlines (6)
  • Car Rentals: Hertz Rent-a-Car (27) and Enterprise Rent-A-Car (29)
  • Cruise Lines: Royal Caribbean Cruises (4) and Carnival Cruise Lines (12)

“The Social Media Industry Report 2018 Travel and Hospitality” is based on brand conversations across social networks, review sites, blogs, forums, and news sites worldwide.The report examines top trends and overall performance of selected brands as discussed across several social channels. The analysis focused on an assortment of 60 brands across five categories including airlines, car rental companies, cruise lines, hotels and travel sites.

Hotels accounted for 33% of the top 10 brands, and performed well with the second highest average net sentiment and passion measured in the report. There is an opportunity for them to start embracing more visual channels like Instagram and YouTube, according to the company.

Travel sites accounted for 10% of the conversation measured for this report and most of their conversations take place on forums and Instagram. NetBase found that conversation themes differed between aggregators and specialty sites.