My
Facebook experience in the hotel industry
Do you love to travel? Are you are referring to social networks choosing a hotel? Do you read reviews?
According to the latest data by business magazine Fortune, people more often get to the news sites though Facebook social pages, rather than through search engines.
According to the results of the analytical study of 400 different news
sources, 43% of entries are performed through Facebook while Google is accountable
for only 38%. Analysts say that search engines have already reached their peak,
while social networks have only started climbing to the top of their capabilities.
When a couple years ago Travel
+ Leisure magazine announced SMITTY (Social Media in Travel and Tourism) Award,
hotels from around the world shared their successful stories of launching advertising
campaigns on social networks.
Two hotels got SMITTY Award in "Best use
of social networks for social activities" category. Hotel chain Kimpton
Hotels used Facebook to hold the contest with free Christmas vouchers for
families of US military as a prize. During Hurricane Sandy hotel InterContinental
Barclay in New York was a source of social assistance publishing news on its Facebook
accounts.
As you may already
know, I work in a hotel, so a question of SMM use in the hotel industry is very
important for me. The main problem with our hotel is that it is small and there
is no special marketing service, but despite these circumstances and considering
the competition, I think that we are doing a lot. FB is a social media we mainly
focus on.
The majority of our work
in the hotel is in real life, but we are looking for opportunities to improve our
service and interact with customers through social networks. Our page on
Facebook.
I want to point out that it is not always
obvious that hotel chains’ activity on social networks pays back. However, you cannot
disagree with the fact that social networks allow us to find common ground with
our customers. If something unpleasant would happen in our hotel, reputation is
at issue. Sometimes clients point out the problems in the hotel themselves and
to do this they use FB. I guess it is better to know that there is a problem
and offer some solutions, than to not know about its existence.
Here are some tools I use on FB in my work.
Interactive communication. I do not expect users to start posting comments
on the hotel page. It is necessary to motivate them, to form interest. To do
this I use:
- contests
- special conditions for subscribers. To increase the number of our
subscribers, we do special offers for those subscribers that share information
with their friends being our potential clients.
- post interesting facts and photos from the life of the hotel
- use discounts for using word-of-mouth. People trust the opinion of
their friends. In the nearest future, we want to use the idea of the
Stockholm hotel that decided that activity on social networks could act as the
currency. We will announce that Facebook users with over 2 thousand friends can
stay in the hotel during the weekend for free. To do this, they should post
about the experience of staying in the hotel.
I would like to achieve much more in our hotel: to turn FB into a customer
service channel, to be more initiative in obtaining feedback by sending
personalized surveys of satisfaction in order to receive valuable information. I
believe that with creative approach, we can remain visible on the Internet by interacting
with customers and building our own customer base, creating publications
everybody will be talking about.
And in conclusion there is the video about one of the Hotel on Ibiza that connect Facebook with tech wristbands for social media crazy clubbers.
By the way, what would you suggest to make the Facebook hotel page more interesting?
Irina, I enjoyed reading your post. Answering the questions (in the very beginning) I should say that I love travelling and speaking of hotels, my final decision depends on the following (pretty obvious): location, price, price-quality relationship. I always read the reviews but I'm trying not to blindly rely on them. As you mentioned above, sometimes people note unpleasant comments on the hotel's page because of bad mood or unsuccessful events, totally unrelated to the hotel. And I completely agree with you. Negative information receives and spreads more rapidly among users and we should always remember about that.
ReplyDeleteThe last question is the most tricky and individual :-) For sure, a certain hotel should find out its own "zest" which forces it to stand out. Or maybe we should examine the interests of our potential customers and unobtrusively give them "a hint".
Yes you are absolutally right, "Certain hotel should find out its own "zest" which forces it to stand out"
DeleteAs more and more people are making travel plans based on social networks, having an understanding of how to effectively utilize them can help hotels both in terms of marketing as well as customer service.
This is a very comprehensive list of interactive communication tools that you use while executing the hotel, Irina! I've found your hotel's page in Facebook and it looks very well performed for me! Beautiful pics and lots of guest's feedback. But answering your last question - my suggestion woulg be to create english version page (same for the web site, cause I've checked it out also;) for your hotel and add some more exuberant description on the "about" page.
ReplyDeleteLove your post! And indeed, our two selves are "HoReCa - obsessed" people, so may be it's time for us to magic up some of our ideas together?:)