One of the initiatives I’m most excited about working on at ReviewPro is the City Rankings Project, which is ranking hotels in each city according to overall guest satisfaction. With so many different review sites and hotel ranking systems on the web today, many people are wanting to cut through all the noise and see these ratings in a single place. I see a growing realization that no single review source can be an accurate measure of online guest satisfaction.

A key competitive advantage that ReviewPro offers its clients is access to the Global Review IndexTM, which is an overall rating of guest satisfaction across 60+ review sites in 10 languages. It’s based on a proprietary algorithm developed with hotel groups, academics, industry experts, and statisticians – taking into consideration the relevance and importance of each individual online review.

A list like “Best Hotels in City X” obviously attracts a wide range of people for various reasons. But as a journalist and hotel industry analyst, one of the big opportunities I see these lists giving hotel marketing professionals is the ability to identify top performers – and then examining what they are doing to deliver extraordinary service. (My intention is to bring some of these stories to you as case studies in the future.)

Today we released lists of the most popular hotels in London, Barcelona, and Madrid, according to online guest reviews. See the list of hotels here, or read the full press release on HospitalityNet. Dozens of additional cities around the world will be covered in the months ahead, so keep an eye on the ReviewPro blog for the latest announcements.

If you have any feedback, questions, or suggestions for this research project, let me know in the comments below…

[Photo credit: chriszami]

“What do we publish?” That is one of the most frequently asked questions I hear from hotels as they begin participating in social media. Content publishing can be a challenge for anyone but with the right systems, the process gets easier. I demonstrated this process during an online class at ReviewPro last week, and wanted to share with you the highlights of how to build an effective social publishing program.

Part 1: Before you begin publishing

“Think like a publisher.

Create remarkable content.

Distribute it as far as possible.”

This has been my mantra since I began getting serious about online publishing. I wrote this out and posted it by my desk after reading The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott, and following this approach at every step helped me build Hotel Marketing Strategies into the #1 source of original hotel marketing advice worldwide. You can also use it to establish your hotels as leaders in your market.

Content is a strategic asset

This concept of “thinking like a publisher” is so important because online content is becoming a strategic business asset.

Why?

Research has indicated upwards of 90% of travel purchases begin with a web search. When you are publishing answers to the questions people look for, the chances of someone finding you increases dramatically. For this reason, websites that publish travel planning advice often become the most popular. If you look at some of the biggest travel sites in the world, such as TripAdvisor, you can see they were built around the concept of service – providing answers and advice to travelers.

Think of all the questions that go through your head when you plan a trip to a new city: everything from airport transportation to dining and shopping options to activities to do in the area. Savvy organizations are using what I call the concierge approach to content marketing: the practice of publishing material to proactively answer questions. This can take many forms – from articles, to Twitter updates, to videos on YouTube. But hotels create this for one purpose: to help their customers and guests.

Publishing content is also a strategic asset because it builds competitive advantage. Creating great content requires a creative approach, which makes it difficult for your competitors to copy.

Content must be linked to the buying process

Understanding that people look for different things at each stage of their travel planning can help to guide the publishing process.

• Before trip – the “dreaming” phase
  • Your job: Help with planning
  • Best tools: Blogging, video, photos

• During trip
  • Your job: Service for enjoyable, memorable time
  • Best tools: Twitter, mobile

• After trip
  • Your job: Get them to share online
  • Best tools: Review sites, Flickr

Content should relate to your audience

You probably already know some basic demographic details about your clientele, but it is worth researching this a bit more. Better knowledge of the people you’re trying to reach helps you answer the right questions and identify the most appropriate resources to share.

No publisher knows exactly what their readers want until they actually start publishing and then measure the feedback. So start now, test various forms of content, and experiment until you find a mix that generates the best results for you.

“A key to engaging content is put the customer first, to solve her problems and answer his questions. This requires understanding their beliefs, feelings, wants and needs.” – Keith Wiegold, the Content Marketing Institute

Content needs a style guide

We often talk about social media policies, but let’s assume you already have one in place at your organization. A key part of running an effective social publishing program is developing a style guide that will direct the process.

As you create content, it’s very important to remember where your brand is positioned in the market. I find that the types of content that work well online don’t vary much across different hotel segments, but the “voice” and tone – the style in which you communicate – varies widely. How should your Twitter authors, for example, use humor? What might be seen as edgy for one brand might cross the line into bad taste for another. So be sure to set the expectations in your style guide. A style guide keeps all your content consistent, and allows you to engage multiple people in the publishing process.

Part 2: Identifying the right content to publish

A look at the most popular hotels on Twitter and Facebook reveals some common themes about what content types get the greatest response.

10 things to post on Twitter

1. Responses to questions, comments and mentions
2. Retweets of positive feedback
3. Retweets of other resources
4. Recommendations
5. Media mentions
6. Questions
7. Contests
8. Real-time information
9. Personal thoughts
10. HR and recruiting

10 things to post to Facebook

1. Professional photography
2. Photos from your staff
3. Photos from your guests and fans
4. Curated lifestyle content
5. New amenity announcements
6. Staff interviews or profiles
7. Polls and surveys
8. Syndicated content from other networks
9. Contests
10. Deals and special offers

Part 3: Practical tips for producing the content

How to find the content

The top challenge for publishers on the social web is finding and producing high-quality content. Overcome this by thinking about co-creation opportunities – getting your guests to help you in the publishing process. Not only does this help reduce your workload, but it provides several distinct advantages:

1. Potential to increase brand loyalty: active participation in content production can create a sense of ownership.
2. Greater depth of information – there’s a reason Wikipedia is over 25 times larger than the Encyclopedia Britannica; everyone working together can create more content than one individual organization. A wide range of information is essential for reaching the long tail of niche web searches.
3. Guest’s perspective: travel planners would rather hear from other guests than from marketers like us.
4. Increased search visibility: Neislen Buzz Metrics reports 26% of all search results link to user-created content.
5. Free & candid market research: guests will be freely talking about what they like and don’t like – without interruptive surveys or focus groups.

The next time you receive positive feedback, ask the guest for some type of online contribution. Have them share that experience online with their friends.

“The minute we overstep in that community and try to push our message and not celebrate the message of the community our disconnects shoot up. You have to co-create and participate and honor the community.” – Coca-Cola Marketing SVP Wendy Clark

In order to encourage people to share content online, you need to communicate what they have to gain from the process. It allows them to share experiences with friends and family. It helps other travelers. It builds their own social profile.

A big trend in the area of content co-creation is blending journalism with professional editorial content. For example, CNN is experimenting with “Open Stories” which combines crowdsourced coverage and material from professional journalists. This process works well in news, and can also be very useful for travel companies.

Other sources of inspiration

A big thing that differentiates the best publishers is they have better inputs. High-quality sources help writers create high-quality content. Build a system that helps you identify new stories:

• RSS reader to track the newest stories from a diverse range of websites
• Twitter lists that allow you to actively follow a diverse group of people
• Delicious hot links and Tweetmeme for trends
• Local news and event websites such as Patch.com

Get organized

The best publishers are also usually the most organized. As data overwhelm becomes an increasingly dangerous threat, the need to source, store, categorize, and retrieve information becomes increasingly important. Build a toolkit to help you with the publishing process.

1. An idea collection system, such as Evernote or Delicious bookmarking
2. A story planning system, such as mindmapping
3. An editorial calendar (Building an online audience is all about consistency and quality, and a calendar is essential for this)

Depending on your needs, you may need additional supporting tools. We put together a list of 18 tools here that can help you with publishing: http://reviewp.ro/publishingtools

Promote your content

Publishing has little value unless people actually see the content. This is why it’s a good rule of thumb to spend half your time creating, and half your time promoting. You need good content and good coverage.

Often, the best way to promote your material is to re-purpose it for many different channels. Repurposing & reposting content helps you reach new audiences. This is why I encourage publishers to think like a DJ – always “remixing” their published content. This can take many forms:

• Blog posts
• Email
• Newsletters
• Articles
• PDFs for download
• Press releases
• Case studies
• Video
• Twitter updates

Make the content easy to spread and share: encourage people to include your content on their websites, and pass it along via Twitter and other channels. David Meerman Scott talks a lot about losing control of your message if you want it to spread.

Identify partners with influence scoring

The right partnerships can accelerate the spread of your content online, and influence scoring is a good way to identify potentially valuable partners. Once you have identified the influential voices in your niche, work to develop mutually beneficial relationships with them.

Think internationally

The web is not just about the English-speaking market, and this is especially true in the travel industry. For many hotel groups, significant opportunities exist in distributing content in local markets around the world. If you want your messages to receive maximum coverage, establish a plan for raising global visibility.

Begin with translation. Taking your existing content and translating it to other languages is a good first step. Start by translating core “evergreen” content – such as a city guide.

Quickly proceed to creating localized content. Different audience may have different needs. Isabelle Lozano of the Apostrophe Hotel in Paris is one of the most interesting examples I’ve seen of this. Their entire website is built as an online magazine, with a significant amount of original content. She creates unique content in French and in English, since she finds that these audiences have different questions and interests. Chances are good that your hotels would benefit from a similar approach.

–

You can view the slides from my presentation about social publishing here, and watch the ReviewPro blog for exclusive interviews we did with the Roger Smith Hotel and Apex Hotels.

If you’re looking for a way to manage your hotels’ entire social media program, request a demo of ReviewPro and ask about the new publishing tools that were added recently.

I’ve always been a strong advocate of adopting a publisher’s mindset as a key ingredient in the recipe for hotel marketing success. Because of this, I’m delighted to let you know about a free online class we’re hosting at ReviewPro.

Thursday, April 28th at 8am PST San Francisco (11am New York EST, 5pm Barcelona CEST), I’ll walk you through:

• Why content marketing and social publishing is so important
• How to align your content with your current and intended audience
• Practical tips for producing high-quality content – while making your job as easy as possible
• The best time of day to publish on each of these networks
• Insider tips for promoting the content you create
• An analysis of some of the most successful hotels in social media
• And much more…

Learn from successful practitioners

To illustrate the best practices we discuss, we’ll also hear from innovators at two of the most creative hotels on the social web:

• John Knowles, Director of Innovation at Roger Smith Hotel (sharing perspective from an independent property)
• Sam Weston and Amy Spark, E-Marketing Managers at Apex Hotels (sharing perspective from a brand)

Win a personal publishing strategy session

Those who attend this event will have the chance to win one of two 30-minute publishing strategy consultations with me. This will be a good opportunity to plan out an implementation roadmap based on the concepts we discuss in this seminar.

Register now for this training

This is going to be an event you don’t want to miss – and your staff shouldn’t miss either. Click here to reserve your seats today

You’ve undoubtedly seen a lot of buzz around Room 77 recently, but most of it has been consumer focused. To understand what hotels need to know about this startup, I talked with founder Brad Gerstner and general manager Kevin Fliess.

Brad, why did you start Room 77?

It’s simple: we think travelers should have more control and transparency around their hotel rooms – before they arrive. As a traveler, I have been frustrated for years by the fact that room data is not available and so I started keeping a list of my favorite hotel rooms on my Blackberry. After a couple of years, my friends started asking me for “the list” and I realized that there was an opportunity to do this at scale.

It comes down to this: A little information can go a long way to empowering consumers and that’s why we created Room 77. This is the world’s first hotel room database and search engine, and it provides travelers with the information they need to find the best room for them – including details on which rooms to request and the ones to avoid.

Kevin, Room 77 has received a lot of press coverage, but most of the stories were about the benefit to consumers. What do hotel managers need to know about your site?

It’s important to keep in mind that any benefits for hotel guests can quickly translate into benefits for hotels. We’re already working with chains and individual properties around the world to verify their room data. Getting a guest into a desired room can increase satisfaction, loyalty, and potentially revenue. In fact, we’re already in discussions with a number of properties about piloting revenue-generating programs and technology.

To become a “verified hotel” on Room 77, the hotel manager simply needs to review their content to ensure accuracy. Once a hotel is verified, Room 77 will link directly to that property’s booking page. Our partner relations team works with the hotel to complete this process and the whole process usually takes less than an hour.

Hotels have the opportunity to augment their content and we encourage them to do so. As an example, the Grand Hyatt Seattle and the Hyatt at Olive 8 have not only verified their room data, they also had staff take interior photos of every single room. These images are accessible through the Look Inside feature. Look Inside provides a unique opportunity for hotels: it allows properties to highlight distinctive characteristics of each room in every hotel category, which creates an entirely new connection between the guest and property before they ever step foot in the lobby.

By partnering with Room 77 to verify data, hotels can realize more leads directly to their website for direct reservation inquiries. In the months ahead, we’ll be adding more features that will help hotels attract more direct customers and introduce revenue-generating services.

At PhoCusWright@ITB 2011, the question was raised whether Room77 will lead to hotels eventually selling rooms by their individual numbers. Do you think there is a trend in this direction?

There is definitely a lot of interest in innovation within particular hotel chains and we expect to see more development and innovation in the next couple years. The hotel room provides unique ancillary revenue opportunities for hotels. There are ways that hotels can monetize premium rooms and consumer research we’ve commissioned shows a large portion of travelers would be willing to pay a small fee to secure a room of their choice. We are piloting several approaches to guaranteeing specific room numbers for guests. Hotels can provide this service for a fee or as a benefit to members of their loyalty program.

What are your plans for working with hotel chains and individual properties?

We want to work with every chain and property for 3-star and above hotels worldwide. We already have data on more than 460,000 hotel rooms in 18 destinations, and our goal is to expand our database to include 1 million rooms by the end of the year.

We’ve been speaking with major chains and boutique properties around the globe, and, since launching the public beta last month, we’ve been contacted by more than 150 hotel representatives about working more closely with us. We have a lot to offer chains and individual properties, including brand building and increasing loyalty, and we anticipate that our database will continue to grow through these increased partnerships, the efforts of our in-house team and travelers.

How do you plan to evolve Room 77 as a service in the future?

As a startup, we see a number of ways to innovate the hotel room search and selection process. First and foremost, we are working hard on delivering more destinations on every continent. We’re excited that hotels are starting see the benefit and value of working with us to do so. We invite any hotel that wants more information to reach out to us at: hotels@room77.com.

In addition to new features planned for later this year, like destination-based search, we are looking into ways to partner with hotels to guarantee premium room requests, much the same way consumers pay incremental fees for premium airline seats. We anticipate this revenue will be shared with the participating hotel partner.

Thanks very much, Brad and Kevin!

[Note: This case study was contributed by Fabrice Burtin from Keen - a brand strategy agency based in Bangkok]

The Sukhothai Bangkok has spent 20 years at the pinnacle of the city’s hospitality industry. Its reputation for design and service has led to numerous appearances in travel press “Top Ten” lists, as well as a consistent place at the top of TripAdvisor reviews for Bangkok hotels.

The old website for Sukhothai

The current website was implemented 4 years ago and used a content management system that hotel staff found hard to use. Management felt that while existing, loyal guests were happy to continue using the website, it still needed to generate a larger share of bookings, as well as reflect the new positioning of The Sukhothai brand.

The old site for Sukhothai

The Challenge

The Sukhothai is well known for its unique design, architectural style and amazing service. The challenge was to create a website redesign to reflect all of this, while at the same time significantly increasing ROI.

The Solution

Keen worked with The Sukhothai to give the site a new look and feel, something that felt more modern, but at the same time retained the style and elegance of the brand.

The new website design for The Sukhothai

The website copy was rewritten, driven by visitor behaviour trends that put more emphasis on scanning text rather than reading it.

In addition, all pages contained relevant calls-to-action, giving users an intuitive next step.

Finally the site included a customized booking mask that mirrored the look and feel of the site and linked directly with a new booking engine. Rather than push this booking mask in the face of the visitor, Keen persuaded The Sukhothai to keep it behind a prominent “Book Online” text link. This less forceful sales approach was in keeping with the brand, but did go against common industry practice.

The Results

Within days of the new site going online in October 2010, the team at The Sukhothai could already see a significant increase in both visitor interactions and the number of bookings being made.

The new SEO-friendly structure of the site helped to increase search traffic by more than 50% over three months, maintaining good levels of pages viewed and time spent on the site per visit.

With this new influx of visitors the site saw a 260% increase in entries to the booking engine. Within one month of launch, The Sukhothai was routinely recording double the number of bookings per day (year on year) compared to the old site. By the third month, monthly revenue was already more than double the total cost of the redesign and the site was breaking all previous property records in terms of bookings.

As a footnote, The Sukhothai has decided to follow up on this success by working closely with Keen to drive even more traffic to the site from social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as launching a mobile version of the site too.

Travel Spike Social Media Manager Carly Redgers and President Ryan Bifulco shared with us the inside story on how Sofitel Luxury Hotels earned over 28,000 quality followers on Twitter – and became one of Klout’s Top 20 Most Influential Hotels – within one year.

How do you define “quality” Twitter followers?

Quality is, of course, very subjective. For some clients, you might say it’s related to power or influence, so you’d review their Klout score. Our project objective – how we define quality – is to earn fans and followers that are local and interested in fine dining, wine or french culture.

Tip #1 – Appoint a social media coordinator for each property.

This person will be the eyes and ears on the property, including sharing specials at the spa or menu changes at the restaurant. They coordinate with sales, marketing, weddings, meetings, events and the concierge to share updates and help their social media team get the message out.

How did you select a social media coordinator at each property? What was your criteria?

We asked each hotel to identify the person that either had the most experience or enthusiasm for social media. Since Travel Spike trained them on social media and we ultimately handle social media strategy and management, we did not need anyone to be an expert, just passionate about the project and willing to learn.

The Sofitel Miami's Leblon Party

Tip #2 – Be authentic.

Customers don’t want to read updates that sound like a robot has written them. Sofitel is a unique upscale brand known for its stellar service and French style, so the social media updates stay true to the product.

Could you define “be authentic?” How did you allow personality to come through while still adhering to guidelines?

Authentic means to keep things real and applicable, rather than just sharing corporate robotic propaganda – regardless of the company. Sofitel does have corporate guidelines, but we allowed the brand’s personality to shine.

Sofitel is French, stylish, magnificent, elegant and upscale. So we give their social media presence a bit of a personal touch, and include local specials and events they support.

Tip #3 – Target your demographics.

For Sofitel, targeting discerning travelers and gourmet diners remains a top priority.

How did you target demographics?

We started the social media program with just Facebook and Twitter, and we’re expanding the program in 2011 to new outlets. Our team reviews public information provided in profiles on Facebook and Twitter. Our Miami hotel networks with people living in the Miami area, for example, because they want to promote their restaurant and bar to locals.

Tip #4 – Sprinkle in local events.

Show off your concierge skills by becoming the local inside source for events, parties and festivals. Sofitel Los Angeles, for example, tweeted live from their recent Golden Globe Gifting Suite.

How else can events can be used as a social marking device?

You can do a lot with events. We’ve organized TweetUps at properties – where we invite Twitter users to network in person. We tweet live during the event for extra exposure. You can also Tweet live from other events around the city or promote events on the Facebook events calendar.

Tip #5 – Engage with your audience. Don’t just sell.

The quickest way to lose a consumer is to ‘bang them over the head’ with product information. Sofitel Washington DC asked their Facebook fans which DC tips they would like to receive; consumers responded that they want to hear more about museums, family travel, luxury dining, and romantic tips for couples.

What questions did you find got the most engagement? Can you tell us a little more about how you used social media for research?

We keep things fresh and engaging by varying interactions with our followers; fun trivia questions are very well received. We solicit feedback from the followers and invite them to participate in the process, which goes over quite well. For example, we might ask followers to vote on a type of drink special, or suggest a new spa treatment.

We use the reporting provided in Facebook, and also review reports from a social analytics company – Sofitel’s social media research partner. Our team does social media research on the competition, and we poll users to gauge interest and test new programs, as well.

Thanks, Carly and Ryan!

I’m worried about the number of hotels I see neglecting to make their websites friendly to international guests. As an American, I see far too many hotels in the US doing nothing to encourage international business – though this is something that seems to affect many other hotels around the world. For an industry like travel, it would seem the importance of international presence and marketing would be clear. Research from Amadeus and others indicate strong growth in inbound travel from Brazil, China, and other Asian countries. According to their Travel Gold Rush report created with Oxford Economics, there will be a “dramatic realignment of travel spend” with global travel doubling between 2010 and 2020.

Yet for too many small groups and independent properties, awareness remains very low about the importance of building visibility in international markets. How can you get started?

Begin with translation

The web is becoming increasingly multilingual, and translating website content is an important first step in attracting international visitors. In his article 3 Tips for Content Marketing in Foreign Languages, Christian Arno writes:

From 2000 to 2008, Web use among the Chinese grew by a whopping 755 percent, while Web use skyrocketed by 2,064 percent by Arabic-speaking individuals. As a comparison, web use increased by 204 percent among English-speaking people. In the near future, Chinese will supplant English as the top language of the Web. As a result of this trend, businesses realize their success on the Web will depend on creating foreign-language Internet marketing strategies.

A quick look at Google Analytics can help you decide which languages are important to publish information in. Also, consider which parts of the world you need to develop a presence in. (The reports linked above may help you with this.)

Provide localized content

Translating your existing content is an important first step, but localization takes it a step further. Travelers from regions look for (and react to) different content. People visiting from different countries will find different types of information useful.

In our interview with Isabelle Lozano, she revealed this about the website for Apostrophe Hotel:

The French part has more articles and talks more about things that are less-known than in the English part. We’ve realized that the French customers were really reading alot of our posts. After arriving at the hotel, after their booking, they would say, “I’m going to go see this exhibition that I saw on the website.” The English part follows the same idea, but talks more about the hotel itself, because that’s what English clients want to learn about, we’ve realized.

At first we were just translating, but we asked customers what they thought, and we found out that our English and French customers wanted different things. English and Americans were saying, “That’s too much information; we just want to learn more about the hotel.”

The lesson: Ask your customers what type of information they expect from your website, look for recurring trends, and then provide this localized content.

Be aware of local social networking preferences

The use and choice of social networking platforms varies from country to country. Vincos created this helpful chart showing the most popular social network in each country:

Facebook is quickly increasing in international popularity. Nick Burcher has an interesting year-over-year usage table for Facebook that shows explosive growth in Indonesia, Thailand, and the Phillipines (among others). Yet Facebook is still by no means universally used around the world: the majority of people in important markets such as Brazil, China, Russia, and Japan prefer other platforms to communicate:

Optimize content for local search

Web content is only helpful to you if people find it. This makes country-specific search optimization an important part of an international hotel marketing campaign. There are detailed tutorials on how to do this, but I like this simple infographic from Elliance via Search Engine Land:

Aside from the technical part of search optimization, selecting the right keywords is very important. Use tools like Google Trends to identify which words and phrases are most likely to be used to find what you offer.

Manage your international online reputation

The fact that guests are talking about your hotel in other languages and leaving feedback on popular websites abroad is overlooked by too many hotel managers. If you want to increase your business from international sources, focusing on building your online reputation worldwide is critical. And while you may have a good reputation on a few domestic websites, do you know what prospective guests are saying (and seeing) on review websites in other countries and in other languages?

Make sure to use a reputation management tool that collects feedback from a wide range of international sources, and multiple languages.

Actively encourage people to leave reviews on their preferred review website of choice, rather than just one specific site. As you attract a more diverse clientele, you will build your global reputation as well.

What are you doing to increase your hotels’ visibility internationally?

What are the best hotels in Berlin? More importantly, how will consumers and industry influencers identify the best hotels in your city?

First, some background information. The title of this post sounds consumer focused for a reason.  To succeed in hotel marketing, it’s important to think like your customer.

Research by Neilsen and others have indicated travelers are using consumer reviews as a deciding factor in which hotel they book. But what’s been missing is a standard measurement of online reputation. Specifically, a measurement that considers ratings in aggregate, and doesn’t rely on any one website.

ReviewPro is resolving this problem with the introduction of the Global Review Index, which is becoming an industry benchmark by which hotel groups are measuring their success (and progress) in online reputation scoring.

The algorithm – which was developed in collaboration with leading academics and hotel industry experts – summarizes guest opinion across 60+ travel review websites in 8 languages. It produces a score from 1-100 that reflects the overall sentiment in guest reviews and ratings. Having all this data in aggregate is perfect for a study like this to discover the best hotels in a city.

So…

What are the best hotels in Berlin?

According to the study, they are:

1. The Ritz-Carlton Berlin (The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company), GRI: 94.69%
2. The Regent Berlin (Rezidor Hotel Group), GRI: 94.36%
3. Casa Camper Berlin (Casa Camper), GRI: 94.02%
4. Alma Schlosshotel im Grunewald (AlmaHotels), GRI: 93.93%
5. The Circus Hotel (The Circus), GRI: 93.88%
6. Grand Hyatt Berlin (Hyatt Hotels Corporation), GRI: 93.16%
7. Adlon Kempinski Berlin (Kempinski Hotels), GRI: 92.85%
8. Swissôtel Berlin (Swissôtel Hotels & Resorts), GRI: 92.57%
9. Hotel de Rome (The Rocco Forte Collection), GRI: 92.47%
10. The Mandala Hotel (The Mandala Hotel GmbH), GRI: 92.22%

[You can see the full story here.]

ReviewPro is planning future city rankings in the future that will interest travelers, but the big questions for you as a hotel marketing professional are:

1. Do guests consider your properties among the best hotels in your city? How would you know?
2. How do guests view your hotel compared to your competitors?
3. What is your plan to continually improve your online reputation ranking?

Last month, Doug O’Reilly, Oliver Sohn and their Seventh Art Media team’s Facebook research struck a chord with our readers.

Industry insiders Geraldine Daly and Are Morch called it, “the most comprehensive Facebook piece I have seen to date,” and “the type of information we need more of.”

Seventh Art Media’s second comprehensive analysis – available in its entirety below – examines 135 hotel Twitter accounts and more than 120,000 tweets from November 1, 2010 to January 31, 2011 and identifies hotels’ best opportunities for finding and increasing their accounts’ value.

1. Commit to slow, quality growth.

As we developed our initial list of hotel Twitter accounts for our analysis, we noticed two phenomena that were striking: First of all was the number of “dead” accounts. These are accounts with several thousand followers that simply stopped functioning one day, but continue to gain followers and mentions that are never responded to or acknowledged.

The second phenomenon of note is the underperformance of highly hyped accounts. We’ve all seen our share of “top 10” lists of hotel Twitter accounts. In performing our list building due diligence, we combed through dozens of Google results for top hotel accounts that various authors recommended we follow. What we saw was startling. These lists in total yielded only a few reasonably performing accounts and significantly more failures—including several dead accounts.

Playing catch-up or making a goal of rapid, low quality follower growth creates minimal returns on the investment. Twitter accounts that commit to slow, quality growth and maintain engagement are reaping the rewards of their efforts.

2. Facebook and Twitter efforts are complementary, but should not overlap.

On average, accounts with a high volume of cross-posts between Twitter and Facebook significantly underperform the ones that handle each channel separately.

Facebook is an exemplary platform for creating reach and amplification but it requires a strong content pipeline and is weak in creating sustained engagement.

In contrast, Twitter is an engagement-driven platform that requires care and commitment to build — but once it moves past a threshold level of engagement and volume it rapidly becomes a valuable brand asset.

3. Follower growth – in and of itself – is a meaningless statistic.

Quality followers will engage and interact with a hotel via Twitter as well as amplify the hotel’s content. Unengaged followers are a black hole for content and add no value to a hotel’s social media efforts and investments.

The figure below lists the top 20 accounts in our study by value. While the top tier is dominated by hotel casinos and hotel brands, we see that some property-specific Twitter accounts have also built out a valuable asset. In just a few months’ time, the newly launched Cosmopolitan Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas has created the most valuable hotel Twitter account among all those studied. The highest valuation for an independent hotel’s Twitter account is the Roger Smith Hotel in New York City.

In both cases, these accounts have lower followings than some of their direct competition, but by focusing on engagement and building quality follower bases they have created far more value. So the question is clearly not “how many followers do I need?” but “how do I get the right followers?”

4. Twitter strategies need to be goal-oriented from day one.

Once these goals are established, the hotel team can build out a long-term roadmap to help overcome internal obstacles, establish an operational culture around commitment to the channel, and begin to earn its way to the top.

The top five performing accounts in Seventh Art Media’s study have a current valuation of over $100k and their values are exponentially growing. In Seventh Art Media’s estimation, hotel brands and properties at any level should be able to realize measurable positive ROI levels with proper goals, planning and organizational commitment in place. Once the asset is built, maintenance costs will drop in relation to returns. The time to invest is now.

Read the full report here:

Hospitality and Twitter: Creating a Valuable Asset

Karen Escalera – President and Chief Strategist for KWE Partners – shared with us how social media helped a food bloggers camp generate sales, introduce the public to Grand Velas Riviera Maya resort’s exceptional food and beverage offerings and set the resort apart from its competitors.

How did you decide a food blogger’s camp was right for The Grand Velas?

The Grand Velas properties stand out for the exceptional quality of their food and beverage offerings, so we wanted to highlight this competitive advantage. In December, we partnered with the Mexico and Riviera Maya Tourist Boards and spearheaded a lunch with our visiting chefs for top national and New York media, primarily offline. We wanted to build on that momentum and reach out to social media who would also drive the “buzz” for F&B and to further build relationships with these influencers.

What role did you play, and how did you work with Velas Resorts’ ecommerce department?

Team KWE, together with Kate Moeller of Prose & Co who handled the event for the past couple years at other resorts in the Caribbean, brought the concept to the resort, invited the bloggers, developed the agenda, did all the PR, and initiated and handled the post camp contest. Pre-event buzz was built via twitter and press releases to targeted audiences, as well as through blog posts from the seminar leaders to their followers. We led live coverage on Twitter with seminar leaders and shared videos and images during the camp on Facebook and Twitter to keep the buzz going throughout the event week.

The resort’s ecommerce department created a dedicated Food Blog Camp landing page, wrote the pre-event blog posts on the resorts’ destination blogs, coordinated the live streaming of FBC’s events to the online community, interacted with attendees on all social media channels and promoted the event on Velas Resorts’ Facebook and Twitter pages. It was a seamless integration.

Was the camp for promotional purposes only, or were you trying to generate revenue?

A key objective was to have the camp not only pay for itself (since we had to pay airfares for our seminar leaders and since we’re an all inclusive, we had food and beverage costs as well associated with their stay), but also, to make money. And we did. The camp was the second of two social media events we’ve had for Velas Resorts. The first was the first ever remote #TNI (Travelers’ Night In) Tweet Up which we had at the Grand Velas Riviera Nayarit. What we did was offer a girls getaway package that included the Tweet up. We followed that lead with the food bloggers camp.

Instead of just having a food bloggers press trip, we made this into a professional development event to attract other bloggers and aspiring bloggers and foodies. With this educational content and fun events such as cooking demonstrations and wine tastings, we had a compelling package. We sold the package at a slightly reduced rate for other bloggers and media and at the rack rate for all others. We sold close to $60,000 worth of packages for the 5 day/4 night event.

Were there any surprising benefits or setbacks?

The immediate response of participants was fantastic. The second the  camp started, more and more images, blog posts, and tweets were  published. We were able to brainstorm with the seminar leaders on  ideas for food and beverage offerings, events and packages to be  offered at other Velas resorts.  The challenge was in the bloggers’ (non-seminar leaders) booking  arrangement. Bookings go to through sales contract center but they  were not able to evaluate bloggers credentials. So what we had to do  was have the requesting participants send a link to their blog so we  could confirm and send to reservations for booking.

What were the results for The Grand Velas?

This was a success by several standards:

• Sold over 46 packages, generating nearly $60,000 in sales
• Generated more than 25 articles on the Camp to over 2.5 million unique visitors per month
• Event coverage received over 5.1 million impressions on Twitter to over 354,000 unique users
• Event coverage received 3.497 million views on Facebook
• Over 775 user generated photos of the event, resort and its food and beverage offerings were circulated

Exceptional reviews of the resorts restaurants were received from seminar leaders and industry authorities. The success generated new events for other Velas Resorts for the coming year (e.g. family cooking and crafting week, Chocolate Festival, TV appearances, recipe releases, etc.)

What would be your advice for hotels planning something similar?

Providing the opportunity for professional development is a powerful lure and definitely the way to go on events such as these. It’s also critical to get participation from the influencers and opinion makers in the category, and then the rest follows.

Thanks, Karen!

[Photos courtesy of Diana Johnson, publisher of Dianasaur Dishes and Eating Richly.]