Recently Flickr, the largest photo-sharing community on the web, announced that the iPhone was on track to become the predominant camera used to take pictures shared on the site. That trend isn’t just a quirk for Apple lovers; last week Facebook shared new stats showing they’ve tripled the number of people accessing the network from mobile devices in less than a year, with more than 65 million users accessing content from smartphones. And in the near future, a new Twitter API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any tweet.

Why should the travel industry be paying attention to these techie trends? Because in a very short amount of time, the vast majority of content that people create and then share with their networks – via Facebook, Twitter and numerous other social sites – is going be searchable not just by the captions and labels manually attached to the content, but also by the location where it was created. Geotagging is the process of adding geographical metadata to various media such as photographs, video, or websites. This extra behind-the-scenes information usually consists of latitude and longitude coordinates, though it can also include altitude, bearing, and place names. That means a simple search on a specific destination or resort could yield a goldmine of photos, videos and status updates that had previously languished on the sidelines.

Similar to the customer service revolution that occurred a decade ago when online reviews took hold via sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp, the hospitality industry will be faced with a change in how people research and decide where to spend their travel dollars. And just like the last shift in consumer behavior, some brands are going to grab this opportunity and run with it, and others won’t figure it out until it’s too late.

A few ways that geotagged content is already relevant to the travel industry:

• Flickr has been a pioneer in this space, with a map interface that allows you to view more than 85 million tagged images on an easily navigated atlas (try searching on your favorite vacation destination)
• Business listings within Google Maps are boldly showing geotagged images within the User Content area of the listing
• Numerous media outlets – particularly travel media – are geotagging their content, and individuals and bloggers can now choose from a variety of applications that use maps to visually display their trips. For example, the TBEX RoadTrip blog created earlier this summer by a group of professional travel bloggers trekking from Seattle to Chicago for a conference integrated images, tweets, suggestions and blog posts into an interactive setting. (Full disclosure: Our client REI ultimately sponsored some gear on this trip because we loved what they were doing)