A few weeks ago, marketing consultant Susan Black headed to Chicago for a business trip. Her flight from New York was late, and she arrived at her four-star hotel at midnight, exhausted and looking forward to getting into bed. But there was a problem at the front desk. Her wait to check in stretched to 15 minutes, then half an hour. The manager on duty was nowhere to be found. When an hour had passed, Black got peeved enough to post her complaint on Twitter. So did three other people waiting in line with her. "I basically wrote something like, 'Can you believe this--a four-star hotel, 12 at night, no manager, can't check in . . . insane.' "

She meant merely to vent. But to her surprise, a hotel a block away tweeted her back within minutes. The message: It would match her rate and take care of any cancellation fee the first hotel might impose.

She didn't hesitate. She told the other people in line about the deal, and all four of them left together. She stayed three nights at the second hotel and tweeted all about it.

A Variety of Benefits for Business Travelers
For those of you who know Twitter either from its mediocre debut in 2006, or for the "news" that Ashton Kutscher or Lindsay Lohan post on it all the livelong day, give it another chance. Twitter has morphed away from a repository of achingly mundane details about achingly mundane people to a kind of tool that can reap real benefits for business travelers.

Black, it turns out, was the wrong person to irk. Not only is she a frequent road warrior, averaging four trips a month, but she's also an expert on social media; she moderated a panel on the topic at the Association of Travel Marketing Executives in Las Vegas at the end of May. In the two months she's been on Twitter, "It has changed the way I communicate when I travel and has totally revolutionized my convention experience," she says. "For ATME, I tweeted where I was for what event, and I ended up meeting several people I never otherwise would have been able to connect with there." One of them became a new client before the meeting ended.

There are plenty of other reasons Twitter can be useful for travelers.

• Price breaks. "It's almost like getting behind the velvet rope," Black says, referring to the way Twitter users have exclusive access to deals and discounts. United Airlines recently introduced Twares--Twitter-only fares. "They are so ridiculously low that they sell out in minutes," Black says. JetBlue has Twitter-only fares; so do 48 hotel brands that offer special rates to the Twitterverse.
   
• Access to responsive service personnel. How often can you have a conversation (albeit an electronic one) with a manager who can actually answer questions or plow through red tape for you? Hyatt just launched a 24-hour concierge service powered by Twitter, designed so you can ask specific questions about everything from airport transfers and what's available on the room-service menu to whether you can schedule a massage at the day spa after your meeting is over. Has an airline lost your luggage? Have a complaint about service, or lack of it? You'll have more success sending a tweet than going through more conventional channels to resolve the problem, Black claims.

During her ATME panel discussion, she discussed a bag she lost on Southwest Airlines. She tweeted the airline and got a reply about the whereabouts of the missing luggage within the hour. "You'll have a conversation with corporate brands you'd never be able to have by any other communication method. Think of it as real-time customer service," she says.

• Access to breaking information. Twitter users know about any event, man-made or otherwise, that could disrupt any part of your trip--a storm, a car accident snarling traffic when you're rushing for a meeting, a hurricane or an outbreak of disease like SARS or swine flu. Thousands of travelers used Twitter to find out whether there were flu outbreaks where they were going. You could also find out about the most recent advisories, what suppliers were doing about refunds and what other corporate travelers were doing to stay safe. Either you follow other conversations--easy to find through a search engine on the home page--or tweet a question directly to a travel supplier, such as a travel agent or a hotelier.
   
• Advice from those in the know. If you're heading to a place you don't know and want a recommendation about a great place to stay, visit or eat, send a query to the Twitterverse. Within an hour you'll have all sorts of suggestions from locals who are more than happy to help.
   
• Leverage the network part of social networking. Twitter is a fast, easy, often-fascinating way to connect with like-minded people who'll be in the same place you'll be. And if you'd like to connect with other Twitter users in person, you can try finding a Tweet-up--ad hoc social events where Twitter fans communicate with one another the old-fashioned way: with spoken language.