Digital Native Shows the Way for GBTA Europe Delegates in Budapest

London, 2012-10-4 — /travelprnews.com/ — GBTA, the voice of the global business travel industry treated delegates at GBTA Europe’s Annual Conference in Budapest last week to an insight to Generation Y and its use of social media by the event’s 17-year-old Digital Native speaker, Max Keegan, in his talk – ‘The Importance of Impatience’.

Prior to the event Max and GBTA Europe conducted brief surveys of their Digital Native and Digital Immigrant groups respectively to compare and contrast each groups’ use of social media.

The survey found that how Digital Immigrants accessed social media through mobile phones (77%) compared to similar figures for Digital Natives (74%). However Digital Immigrants were over three times as likely to access social media via a tablet (46%) than the Digital Native group (15%).

Facebook was the most popular website by far for both groups – followed by LinkedIn and news sites in the case of Digital Immigrants and YouTube and Twitter for Digital Natives.

The survey revealed that 94% of the Digital Native group access Facebook once a day, compared to 63.8% of Digital Immigrants. Digital Natives were almost twice as likely to update their Facebook status on a daily basis (22%) than Digital Immigrants (12%), but 50% of both groups updated it less than once a week.

The Digital Native session was supported by RADIUS. Kieran Hartwell, Senior Vice President for EMEA at the company commented, ‘Max’s talk was a valuable reminder that there is a whole generation of people coming into the work force and our customer base for whom communicating and collaborating digitally comes so naturally. While this survey highlights many similarities in the way Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants use social media, the key difference lies in the instinctive manner in which Digital Natives incorporate it into their day-to-day lives.’

The association announced, during its closing session at conference, a plan to introduce a group of seven Digital Natives from each GBTA’s regions across the globe as a panel to be led by Max Keegan. This will act as a reference point to GBTA’s 5,000 global members through the association’s own online social network, The Hub.

CONTACT:        Katharine Blakemore e-mail:  kblakemore@gbta.org

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