Alerted by a blog post from Thomas (a fantasy writer in Peaks Island, Maine, who goes by the name Catherynne M. Valente), the author's supporters launched a volley of calls and online missives to Expedia. And less than 24 hours after the duo's drama began, they were headed to Russia with a promised refund of their $2,000 trip, reimbursement for last-minute visas and other expenses in Frankfurt, plus a $3,000 credit for future travel -- thanks to the power of Twitter and Facebook.

Their happy ending is "a huge triumph for social networking ," says Thomas, who met her Ukraine-born computer programmer husband online in 2003. "Without it, we'd still be stranded in Frankfurt."

Expedia spokesman Adam Anderson says the agency should have directed the couple to the U.S. State Department's site instead of assuring them they didn't need visas. Adds Expedia customer service senior director Thomas Seibert, "Social media played an important role in alerting us to our error."

The horror honeymoon-turned-fairy tale is another example of how travelers are using social media to help solve problems. Writes IndependentTraveler.com's Ed Hewitt: "Calling the 800 number and sitting on hold for 45 minutes waiting for your complaint to be heard isn't your only option anymore."

This summer, months after baggage handlers at United Airlines broke Dave Carroll's guitar and United refused to pay for the $1,200 repair, the Canadian singer fought back with a music video titled United Breaks Guitars that has been viewed about 6 million times on YouTube.

United now uses the incident in training baggage handlers and customer-service representatives -- and made more news by losing Carroll's luggage on a recent flight from Saskatchewan to Denver.

Though still the exception, more travel providers are using social media to address problems before they start echoing in cyberspace. On the airline front, for example, six JetBlue staffers monitor missives from the company's 1.4 million Twitter followers. In one incident, a JetBlue passenger tweeted about not being able to get a seat assignment next to his child; the airline responded while the passenger was still in the boarding area.

For now, says Susan Black of travel consulting firm Black & Wright Group, all tweets and Facebook status updates are not created equal: "Size really does matter, and someone with a few followers on Twitter won't bubble up to the top. For every botched honeymoon that gets resolved, there are thousands of tweeted or posted complaints that are ignored."

But, she adds, "the tide is changing" -- not only because social-media participation continues to grow, but because search-engine giants Google and Bing now index tweets and status updates on the first page of their search results.

If a travel company "ignores something and it goes viral," Black says, "they're doomed."
 

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