Southwest gets the community spirit

To see an example of an airline tapping into the limitless potential for online dialogue with passengers, check out Southwest's new online travel community, which it has imaginatively called Travel Guide.

This new addition to the airline's website enables passengers to share with other passengers their experiences, photos, videos and reviews of the places they've visited.

As an incentive to get passengers posting on the site, Southwest is offering those who create a Travel Guide account the opportunity to win a holiday to Chicago, Fort Myers, New Orleans or Seattle.

Encouraging online dialogue and interaction with passengers is something airlines are slowly beginning to latch on to. For more on this phenomenon, which is still very much in the trial and error phase, read our recent feature on the evolution of airline marketing.