Virgin Atlantic’s plans to roll out global travel community - Vtravelled

It appears that Virgin Atlantic is preparing a major push into social media with the launch of a community site called Vtravelled.

Vtravelled will be a dedicated travel portal which aims to tap into the 'inspirational' travel market, allowing visitors to organise and share their travel plans with friends and family.

Virgin Atlantic will soft launch the site on 28th February to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club members staff, cabin crew and Richard Branson's VIP contacts, and it is then hoping to recruit 2m founding members ahead of a public rollout in June, extending the community to a worldwide audience.

This follows Virgin Atlantic sacking 13 staff in November for using Facebook to criticise its safety standards and calling its passengers "chavs".

The travel market has come under increased pressure from the economic downturn, and according to ComScore, unique visitors for airline sites have fallen by an average of 19%, while in December 2008 Virgin Atlantic's traffic dropped 15% year on year, down to 372,000 unique users.

Phase one of Vtravelled will see Virgin Atlantic help ignite ideas for new trips by featuring 800 destinations with a strong focus on images and maps. It's then understood the airline is considering bringing a booking service onto the site in a bid to monetise traffic.

The site will also include “Trip Pods”, enabling travellers to put together their travel plans, to which friends can be invited to join the area, share photos, notes and chat. Brands will also be able to sponsor a Trip Pod, allowing users to view possible itineraries created by companies.

Virgin Atlantic believes there is a gap in the market that could be filled with inspirational ideas, and is aiming to associate itself with this sort of stimulation, hoping people will think of the site when making a travel decision. They also believe the global site will be a way for people to find personal travel content.

The site will be targeted at people who take holidays more than three times a year, with a focus on UK and US audiences. It plans to position it as a must-visit destination and aims to be the only truly global travel community site.

Their move follows a number of social media projects by rival airlines. Last year British Airways capitalised on the travel community market with the launch of Metrotwin, a social site twinning the best of London and New York.

This month Air France and KLM jointly launched social network Bluenity, enabling passengers to share tips from fellow customers.

EasyJet is also creating a dedicated portal allowing users to explore destinations and book flights. A redesign of its site to improve functionality is due to be rolled out this quarter, followed by the incorporation of its Inflight magazine site, which features destination information and downloadable phrasebooks.