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Jamie Bisiada
What if you delete social media accounts? For many travel advisors, this is an unthinkable scenario. Social media is ubiquitous in the agency community. Its use as a marketing and sales tool is widespread and well documented.
Years ago, Lila Fox, owner of Lila Fox Travel Company in Denver, enjoyed sharing her creative pursuits through blogging and social media. But later she found her presence on Facebook and Instagram to be a drain.
When she was online, she felt the need to respond to her customers immediately because they could see a green dot next to her name. It made it difficult to enforce boundaries. Fox also saw her friends and followers use social posts as a megaphone for their beliefs on polarizing topics rather than discussing them. As she put it, there was “no room for resistance.”
“I think that’s the root cause of a lot of the problems and the division, when that really hasn’t been my experience when people are having real conversations,” Fox said.
And she left.
Fox does not offer a social media opt-out process. Instead, one morning in 2017, she posted a note saying she was deleting her Facebook account.
Lila Fox with one of her photos on display at a local art center. Photo credit: Courtesy of Lila Fox
She stayed on Instagram a little longer. An avid photographer, Fox initially found it a great place to showcase her work. But she started seeing the same issues she had identified on Facebook, and one day in 2020 she downloaded and deleted her Instagram to archive her posts.
Fox is not alone. In talking to colleagues, especially women consultants and agency owners, many people are expressing a desire to get off social media, she said.
“But there’s a fear associated with it, like, ‘What am I going to miss?’ “‘Am I going to be relevant? Am I going to lose business?”
Fox admits that giving up social media isn’t an option for everyone. For many, it is an important source of business. She also credits her social accounts with promoting awareness of her agency in the early days.
“I never tell people you have to get off social media,” she says. “Of course not. If you like it, and it’s working? By all means. But if you don’t like it and it’s not working, but out of fear and fear of loss, then we can have it. I can help you have the conversation.”
Fox says she hasn’t lost business by not being on social channels. In fact, her two biggest clients — who were among her first clients and who she always enjoys working with — are outside of the social networks themselves, which helped Fox hint that social isn’t working for them either.
Today, she shows her photographs in a more analog way: a portrait Fox took in Abu Dhabi hangs in a local art center, where she requested her images be displayed.
“It’s a different way of putting a travel idea in front of people that makes people stop for a minute,” she said. “Technology and social media are so fast. It takes a lot to get someone to stop and look at something.”
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