Barrhead to pioneer new social sharing tech

Agency chain Barrhead Travel is to pioneer new social sharing technology on its website developed by a local Scottish start-up and officially launched this week.

Agency chain Barrhead Travel is to pioneer new social sharing technology on its website developed by a local Scottish start-up and officially launched this week.

Make it Social is the brainchild of managing director Eddie Robb who came up with the idea after organising rugby trips to Edinburgh while at university.

The technology allows travel partners to add a small line of code to their site which places a Make it Social button available at a strategic place in the booking process which allows customers to fire up the widget which then shares the trip details among friends on their social networks.

The technology allows each member of the group to comment and the travel agent to answer questions, and it allows individual payments so the organiser is not left out of pocket.

Robb revealed at last night’s Small Fish Big Ocean WTM Pitch Night that the firm had officially launched that day and that Barrhead Travel was one of its first industry partners. Make it Social was due to go live on the agent’s site yesterday.

“We are looking to take this into other sectors like ticketing and cinemas,” said Robb. “Make it Social will become known as something where you can make your products available to your customers’ friends. It makes financial sense of social media and will increase conversions and sales and you can have it now very quickly with just a simple piece of Java script.”

Make it Social does not deal with payments or operate a commission model; instead it charges a monthly fee based on a sliding scale dependent on the size of the business.