It’s summertime and I keep hearing the anthem on the radio, reminding me that I need to get out and enjoy the warm weather. A vacation, you say? Sounds fine! And where do you recommend I go? You can tell me straight through Facebook, thanks to TripAdvisor‘s new social integration. The added feature, called Trip Friends, leverages its Cities I’ve Visited Facebook app to tap into your social network in order to get travel recommendations.

The new feature works by showing you which of your friends have marked the given city in their TripAdvisor app. You can send a message for information and recommendations to all your friends that have been there, with a group message or individually.

“Travelers using TripAdvisor Trip Friends will be amazed to see all the places about which their friends can offer highly relevant, personal travel advice—from that extra tip about the best place for croissants in Paris (your friends know how much you love croissants), to insights on the best scuba spot in Belize (through TripAdvisor Trip Friends, you discovered that two of your friends recently returned from an awesome scuba trip in Belize). This feature will turn great trips into fantastic ones, with convenient, personal input from people you know best and trust most,”

said Steve Kaufer, founder and CEO of TripAdvisor.

Considering Expedia-owned TripAdvisor was quick to jump on the Facebook app bandwagon, it’s nice to see that the travel site has finally found a better way to incorporate its search tools with your favorite social site. Maybe now we’ll be able to better trust the reviews coming through TripAdvisor, seeing as they’re from existing (and pre-approved) friends. It’s unlikely that your friends will steer you wrong, depending on what kind of friends you have.

The move also highlights the importance of social media when it comes to niche services, products and targeted marketing for online travel sites. Using a social component within an online travel resource has been an ideal that TripAdvisor and its competitors have striven towards, though the sticking point has always been around encouraging users to join another community and subsequently care enough to remain active.

With Facebook providing the means for a socially enhanced site, no matter what kind of site it is, the need for the travel industry to rely on building its own community have waned significantly. Many online services have gone ahead and used Facebook’s platform for this purpose, with the travel industry slower to take effect.

But that’s not to say the trend isn’t growing, especially as social media proves itself in another way. Social media channels, such as those through Twitter and Facebook, have made travel-related communication easier for people. Take recent natural disasters, for instance, such as the Iceland volcanoes and the BP oil spills that have halted travel to the Gulf. Were it not for social media, many travelers and their loved ones would have had a more difficult time keeping up with each other, as well as the news.

While I’ve been wary of social media integration for recommendation purposes since early on, it’s becoming more clear that social media has found better utilization practices, even in travel. As we saw last week, both Yahoo and Microsoft have launched new initiatives that take advantage of Facebook’s growing relevance, with news feeds and social map overlays.