5 Examples of Guestsourcing in Action
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Guestsourcing is the practice of using customer-created media in the hospitality & travel industry. Here are five companies trying this in different forms:
Sunriver Resort
The Sunriver Resort features guest-submitted photos in a nice album:
yatt’it by Hyatt
This network connects guests and encourages them to provide information to each other.
yatt'it home page
Time will tell how well these big brand-sponsored social networks succeed, but smaller groups and independent don’t need to despair. I think equally good (if not better) results could be obtained by leveraging existing networks on Flickr, YouTube, and similar sites.
Requiring separate registration may turn away many people who otherwise may be interested in this content. With so many social networking options, people hesitate to join one more network. When you’re fishing, you need to go where the fish are – and that means targeting the big, popular sites.
Priority Club by IHG
The Priority Club community is using member photos prominently throughout the site…including the website header:
Priority Club home page
BMI
I wrote about this earlier, but this British airline showcases other people’s Flickr photography as the core visual element on their website:
bmi website example
Rosewood Hotels
Taking things offline, Rosewood Hotels ran a promotion titled “My Rosewood Vacation” – in which they encouraged children ages 2-14 to draw a picture of their vacation at the collection’s resorts. (A friend on Twitter tipped me off to this one, but it appears the web page is no longer up… you’ll have to see a copy of the old page on archive.org.)
A promotion like this is useful for many reasons, but may contribute little to your internet marketing campaign. The same thing is true for internal social networks like Hyatt’s yatt’it.
The quickest route to building a powerful web presence is encouraging guests to publish on popular public networks. Once the media is on those sites, you can organize, share, and promote it.
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Thanks for the examples. I deal with brands and also the smaller independent hotels across the world and I feel that the brands are having a go, just because they feel they have to. They struggle with the strategy and utility of the service and are a bit naive at this early stage.
By far the most cost effective and established channel for smaller hotels and groups that want to get into the social space is to use existing networks that the masses are using.
This still does not neagate the need for and effective strategy and plan for making best use of the investment in both time and energy to such extra online channels.
You’re right, David: engaging people where they already hang out online is the best strategy for hotels of any size. Smaller hotels shouldn’t feel like it’s a second-rate option for limited budgets.