Social media is also changing the way consumers select products and services, based on the real-time views of others. In industries such as travel and tourism, this is already starting to make annually published guidebooks seem redundant, as tourists skip to third-party sites to see up-to-date guest ratings for a hotel or destination.

Accor, a hotel operator with a broad portfolio of brands globally, has taken a leap of faith in the quality of its customer service by directly integrating live, unfiltered TripAdvisor comments into its main hotel portal. Jean-Luc Chrétien, Accor’s executive vice president for sales, distribution and loyalty, believes this will push the hotel brand to enhance its service overall anyway—so why not make the process easier for its clients? “To an extent, social media is a very healthy thing. It has forced us to revisit some of the ways we do some things, and not to be so complacent,” he says.

Of course, directly publicising unfiltered feedback and ratings, both good and bad, was a tough decision to take. In the end, the hotel believed that public comments were unlikely to deviate widely from the detailed internal data it already tracks (see the fourth megatrend). So far, this has worked: “This has been a bold move. But customers send us emails, saying that they appreciate this,” says Mr Chrétien. In the coming decade, the hotel will take this further, looking for ways to deepen its client interactions on social networks and create more of a dialogue with its guests. Others will surely be looking to do the same.