Is Foursquare Really the Next Big Thing in Tourism?

June 18, 2010 at 9:00 AM | by Omri | Comments (0)

You can always tell when a new social media company has made it, because you start getting consultants telling companies that they'll totally completely no doubt about it die if they don't hop aboard. And while we've outright mocked some travel companies for their inexplicable fascination with Facebook applications, the leap into location-based services like Foursquare makes a lot more sense. And wouldn't you know it, here are a bunch of consultants telling tourism industry officials to "go Foursquare or perish."

The social media completionists at Travelocity have already availed themselves of Foursquare, adding the Traveling Gnome to the network. Pennsylvania's tourism officials have also gotten the memo, setting up Foursquare location badges at a bunch of their historical sites (check out Jaunted's guide to Foursquare badges to see what they look like). The city of Chicago has similarly gotten into the act, setting up a mission that recreates Ferris Bueller�s Day Off.

But it's still an open question whether Foursquare will turn out to be a fad or a real presence in tourism.

Just to take the easy negative example: Foursquare is already a burglar's dream, something that was starkly demonstrated by the Please Rob Me application. Now imagine someone who's away in Europe for a month checking in at one location after another. It's the digital equivalent of having a bunch of newspapers piled up on your front lawn...assuming you're friends with burglars or publishing your location to your Twitter or Facebook feed.

The argument that's always made about how it lets you check location reviews also seems kind of weak, since this is still a developing part of the app as users add more tips. Foursquare is still limited to bleeding edge mobile adopters, and they already have services that do that. What do you think the venn diagram looks like for users who have both Foursquare and Yelp installed on their cell phones? Our guess: not low.

On the other hand, the fact that people are checking in from all those locations and putting up all those reviews speaks strongly to the program's popularity. Nothing succeeds like success, and location-based services are growing at an astonishing pace.

Of course all of this back and forth might become academic the second that Facebook inevitably launches their check-in service. That won't be a very good day for Foursquare, but it'll mean that the technology is pretty much here to stay. Oh, and did we mention that you should be our friend on Foursquare?

[Photo: Foursquare / Wiki Commons]

Related Stories:
· Go Foursquare or perish, tourism industry warned [The Age]
· Technology [Jaunted]
· Foursquare [Jaunted]

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