A survey of prominent travel industry experts conducted by Travel Insights 100 reveals key insights into how they feel about and utilize Twitter, and their thoughts on emerging social media trends in the industry. The results come after kicking off the first Travel Insights 100 program, an ongoing platform for 100 leaders within the travel industry to discuss ideas and worldwide travel issues all via an Internet-based forum. Members will be surveyed on a regular basis to glean their opinions on travel-industry related subjects covering social media, topical news stories and trends and will serve as a bellwether for the industry. Travel Insights 100 is a partnership between UpTake, Tips from the T-List and BootsnAll Travel Network.

Travel Insights 100 members are experts from across the travel industry and around the world. Each has volunteered to participate in the forum to share their knowledge and experience with the group and provide valuable and insightful feedback to benefit the travel community. All Travel Insights 100 research is under a Creative Commons license and can be published or used for commercial re-use.

- Travel Insights 100 kicked off on Sept. 17, 2009. The program, presented by UpTake, Tips from the T-List and BootsnAll Travel Network, consists of 100 travel industry leaders and bloggers.
- Travel Insights 100 is an online forum where a diverse set of travel leaders have a platform for discussion about the economic, political and social issues affecting travel & tourism around the world.
- The site features each member by showcasing their RSS and Twitter feeds, as well as their comments and posts from their own blogs. A list of the members can be found here.

• The popularity of Twitter in the travel industry is unquestionable. However it is a recent phenomenon, with the majority of respondents just started using the tool in the past twelve months (52 percent).
• There is a nearly equal split between Twitter addicts (31 percent use Twitter ten or more times a day) and those who use it less frequently (33 percent use Twitter less than four times a day).
• Surprisingly, the majority of respondents (91 percent) recommend using Twitter to find travel information such as deals and tips.
• Pet peeves include tweets that are too promotional, too mundane or too corporate.

Participants were asked to give predictions for the future of Twitter. Responses ranged from predicting a rocky road ahead for Twitter, to suggesting micro blogging is the future of communications, to forecasting a takeover of Twitter by marketers and a migration away from it to the next big thing in social media.