Today I caught up with Gowalla director of business development Andy Ellwood, who will be presenting at EyeforTravel’s Social Media Strategies for Travel 2011 in San Francisco next month.

What’s the most common misconception about location-based services (LBS)?

The interesting part for us is understanding all the different ways people use our service. So the most common misconception is probably that every user of Gowalla is the same. We’re starting to see a lot of differentiation in how people are using it – people use it for a lot of different reasons. Moms keeping up with kids, businesses using it as a way to tell their brand story around the locations their customers go to, and content providers creating material around places.

We give the ability to provide up-to-the moment information for where people are standing at the moment.

What are the biggest opportunities you see for hotels and travel in this area?

The way I think about the check-in from the users perspective is: this location is a part of my story.

Gowalla was originally founded around the concept of your mobile phone being a passport – and using it to tell a story about the places that you go. Each time I check into a spot, it’s because I’m viewing that as part of my story.

When I travel, I’m telling an even more interesting story.

So the big play for hotels is to take part in these stories?

Correct. I think an important way more and more businesses are thinking about it is: when someone checks into their location – whether it’s the coffeeshop on the corner or the W Hotel in downtown New York – they’re essentially putting their endorsement on that location. By saying “I am here” I’m broadcasting that out to my network. I feel attracted to the business enough that I’ll spend time and money here. I’m not just walking down the street and connecting with every store I pass.

So it’s building up the entire experience around the places people go, rather than just the narcissistic “I’m here and you should care.”

How can LBS be used to deliver remarkable customer service?

Just being conscious of who is at your location. There’s a pub that near me in New York that prides themselves in knowing who has checked in and on location. Most people have their photo avatar up, and the owner will match that to faces there. The other piece of it is if you’re connected – friends – on Gowalla, you’re able to engage with them on the places they go.

A great example is Red Bull. They gave the Gowalla account to their social media guy, and he would check in to places that were associated with their brand. So extreme sports, live concerts – people should be drinking a Red Bull. So he got a huge following of people wanting to live the “Red Bull lifestyle.”

On the flipside, The Four Seasons Hotels in California last fall created some content-curated trips that are like a playlist of spots. “10 places you need to see in San Francisco.” They worked directly with the concierge, asking them what the top places in the city that people should associate with the Four Seasons Experience. So now anyone who follows Four Seasons on Gowalla has access to concierge-level expertise.

Two questions for all brands considering location-based services

1. What is the experience you want to create?
2. Where are the locations you want that experience to exist?

When someone checks in on property, you obviously want to be a part of that. But where are the other locations in your region and around the world where you brand should be top of mind?

Thanks, Andy!

Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with TopGuest founder Geoff Lewis to discuss what’s new with TopGuest – the next-generation loyalty program for travel.

As mentioned in my EyeForTravel event recap post, Geoff said the problem with traditional loyalty programs is those who would pay get stuff for free.

He suggested the next generation of loyalty schemes will involve someone’s physical location plus digital communities plus social networks.

He encouraged us to look at the online experience created by disruptive travel companies such as Jetsetter and AirBnB, which are engaging the social customer much faster. We can also learn from online gaming companies that use an engage (play) now, pay later approach.

During his presentation, Geoff mentioned TopGuest is tracking a number of metrics for their partner companies. Since I’m obsessed with measurement, that caught my attention – and after the event I caught up with Geoff to ask about the analytics his company is tracking. Right now it includes check-ins at the hotel’s own property; social influence metrics such as number of Facebook friends, volume of check-ins, and other social sharing. A portion of users can access data to augment guest profiles, such as birthday, gender, and Facebook likes.

The future of TopGuest?

“Our future vision has really crystallized over the past few days and is now more interesting than just ‘focused on Vegas.’

“Specifically, we are transitioning away from being primarily focused on geolocation check-ins, and our vision is to link all the relevant social activity by a given loyalty program member online with their membership number / guest profile in our partners’ existing databases.

“The objective is to provide a simple, automated mechanism for programs to respond to [and optionally, reward] all forms of digital loyalty by members, including geo check-ins, but also pulling in things like TripAdvisor reviews, TripIt plan sharing, Tweets, Facebook likes, etc.

“Furthermore, we will enable loyalty programs to do personalized marketing — at scale — around member milestones such as birthdays, anniversaries, upcoming events, etc that those members are sharing via their social accounts. We are creating the ‘social loyalty response’ category, and provide the loyalty industry with the first comprehensive measure for member online engagement.”

How did Hotel Le Seven build their Facebook community so quickly? Today I got on the phone with Vice PresidentMartin Soler to learn about the strategy he used to attract nearly 12,000 fans through Facebook. Martin’s company, World Independent Hotel Promotion, works exclusively with independent hotels, with a focus on hotel openings. (Martin is also a talented HDR photographer.)

The Background Story (In Martin’s words)

Seven months before opening we started the campaign. It was an ambitious project – great to work on, because the hotel concept was very unusual. We built a strategy where we would be creating some mystery, and leaking ideas on what every suite would look like.

We were lucky because we had a test room to work with for imagery – the rest were just sketches. We started by talking about the owners, and the other projects they did – like Hotel Five. We talked about all the gadgets and special things there were.

We coordinated with our PR agency to make sure there was no communication with the press. We only wanted to talk directly with the consumer.

Josiah: What communications channels did you use?

Facebook Only

Facebook was our exclusive communications channel.

I haven’t found Twitter to be very reliable for promotions. I feel it’s a bit more of a flash in the pan.

And of course we made a website with very dramatic music and imagery of what guests could expect. Facebook pointed to the website, and the website was very high-production – lots of rich media.

No Press Releases

If people wanted to know anything about the hotel, they had to follow us through Facebook. No press releases went out, and we did not take any questions from the media.

What Caused Rapid Growth

We tried some contests through Facebook, but the results were not impressive as we thought. We tried sending offers to our fanbase from Hotel Five – since the design concepts were similar. If they liked the Five, they’ll love the Seven. So cross marketing was possible there.

So a lot was just telling people about it. Pushing traffic from the website. We also wrote some bloggers, telling them to check out the page since we were going to do something interesting.

It was a bit of a risk because not many hotels have filled their rooms through Facebook yet. But it worked for us!

After Opening

We’ve continued our strategy after opening, and made it clear to our colleagues that it was Facebook that attracted our fans initially. It helped us achieve 80% occupancy on the soft opening – and that was in low season.

The owner was amazed – he didn’t expect that at all.

So we had to remember that our Facebook fans helped us achieve this success. We give them an exclusive room rate – the fans-only rate is the best rate you’ll get – better than our own website or any distributor.

We also reward our Facebook community by notifying them of anything that’s going to happen before we tell anyone else. (Even before we post to our website).

Martin’s Top Five Facebook Tips

1. Treat your Facebook “Likers” like an artist treats their fans. That is, realize they make you important and therefore you need to make them important. Special treatments etc. when they arrive at the hotel is a minimum.

2. Keep your Facebook page as personal as you can. This is an information communication channel to friends. Try to involve them as much as you can.

3. Find out what people want to know about the hotel and give them more of that. It’s not about what you “think” is important; you may be totally off the mark. Listen to them and your page will be a success.

4. Use all the media of Facebook, write articles, post photo albums etc.

5. Treat every post like a “news story;” don’t give it all at once. Give it to them bit by bit and maximize the yield from your stories.

Thanks, Martin!

Iain Pringle – Head of Customer Insight and Loyalty for The Mileage Company – believes that identifying, engaging and acknowledging the preferences of frequent guests through a loyalty program can improve experiences and increase loyalty.

EyeforTravel’s Marco Saio (@Msaio) spoke with Pringle about what this means for hotels.

How do you assess the role being played by loyalty programs as a tool in today’s business environment?

Iain Pringle: Customers are more value conscious; there is no doubt about this. In this environment, loyalty programs give a means to reward customers while retaining margin, but also gives brand owners an opportunity to have a dialogue with customers via social media and other channels.

Do you think rewarding customers for their affiliations with social networks and location-based services enhances loyalty?

Iain Pringle: Presence within a customer’s own social media space is a great opportunity for businesses to build loyalty with their most influential customers.

The measure of getting this right is primarily finding the optimum mix of location, channel and timing. When done well, this can create the perfect mix of right product, at the right time, in the right place.

In July this year, one major hotel chain chose to offer bonus loyalty points to customers who “check-in” at its hotels on location-based social media networks. And this month, Virgin America has chosen to offer its guests real-world travel rewards when they virtually check-in using applications like Facebook Places and Foursquare. How do you see this form of rewarding consumers shaping up?

lain Pringle: Persistence of your brand in a customer’s daily life is growing at a fast rate as companies work out how to create commercial opportunity from the growing social platforms. We believe that this will be a continuing trend as it is cost effective, relevant, and customers are choosing this as their channel of choice.

What – according to you – works best to earn trust, love and advocacy for your products and services amongst a new breed of savvy and fickle travel customer?

Iain Pringle: The key advantage of any travel and leisure loyalty program is the lure of free or discounted travel; it always has been and always will be.

The key challenge, especially in today’s market, is to acquire collectors/members that are prepared to take the time to collect rewards for a longer period to get a more valuable overall reward.

What works best is to focus on four key messages: sell the dream, illustrate the proposition, show members how it is attainable, and give them an easy first step. Keeping to these simple rules ensures that the customers you acquire are more likely stay with you and build their advocacy as they approach their goal.

Iain  is scheduled to speak at this month’s EyeforTravel’s Customer Centric Strategies in Travel conference in Atlanta. For more info, click here or contact Global Events Director Marco Saio.

Thanks Marco and Iain!

Today we’re joined again by Lissa Gruman, a partner at Gruman & Nicoll Public Relations specializing in getting media coverage for hotels.

This final installment of our three part-conversation explains how hotels can merge traditional and new media to reach journalists and guests. In case you missed them, here are the first and second parts.

Josiah: In the context of public relations, is social media messaging intended for the end consumer or the guest, or are we trying to reach journalists through social media?

Lissa: I think it’s a mix. I spend a lot of the time reaching out to both. The trick with the social media is getting the journalists that you want to have your information – and obviously those are at the largest organizations – to want to follow you or like you and want to know what you have to say. And that’s challenging. There’s a lot of content out there in the world and a lot of people vying for space in reaching that content and distributing it.

The other part of it is establishing – and this kind of goes back to age old PR practices – credibility and relationships with the media, such that there are people that know that they can come to you and ask you for an idea, or they’re putting a query out, and know that you give them a credible, timely, relevant response. And those practices won’t go away.

I hate to think that the only way they’ll ever know something about me or my client is with X number of characters, and we wouldn’t communicate beyond that.

Josiah: Exactly. Do you feel that traditional press releases still work in your experience? Have they diminished in effectiveness? Do you feel that relationships or personal connections that you’ve established are better ways to reach journalists, or do you still see that press releases are getting picked up by some important media outlets?

Lissa: I think it’s a combination. You need to try a lot of things. I still believe, first and foremost, that personal relationships really make a huge difference. I know that when I’ve met somebody or I’ve spoken with a journalist, and now we know each other, that at that point in time, I can obviously establish a social media relationship with them, with some sort of vehicle that way, but I also know that I could send them a press release and they’ll get it and read it.

It varies, but I don’t believe, for the time being anyway, that the traditional press release has completely gone away or vanished or is irrelevant. There’s still a place for it. What percentage of the place, I don’t know that I could speak to. But anybody who is only using traditional media and not using social media and vice versa is not smart. I think a well bridge between the two is the way to go.

Josiah: Do you have any favorite websites for distributing press releases, or do you just send them directly to journalists that you know?

Lissa: We use a variety. My Emma is a great one, and we also use that for guest communications. It works really well. You can manage your lists. We of course use Cision, and we can work through that. There’re new competitors coming out that will compete against them as well, but they will allow you to build your search and your queries and to then distribute directly from there. That’s a really exciting opportunity as well in distribution.

The distribution piece is always hard. There’re always mixed messages, and it’s a very individual process. Many journalists say, “I don’t want bulk press releases. I want you to come to me with a specific pitch.” And in many cases, I may want that to be an exclusive.

There are others that want – in this age of fast moving online, where you’ve got a blog to fill or you’ve got online content in some way you’re trying to fill – these short, fast bursts of information, because people are putting out information at this rapid fire rate that they want to fill it.

Traditionally, newspapers are still good for press releases. Long lead magazines can still be good for press releases. And I think there’s a way to intersect with their online divisions to be able to provide them with short bursts of electronic information that they can fill in the short-term on their websites.

Josiah: So in your experience, what are some of the similar characteristics of businesses that get a lot of press coverage? We’ve talked a little bit about amenities and story hooks that seem to work well, but I’m wondering if the management at these companies that get a lot of media attention just have a different philosophy of operating?

Lissa: They do have a philosophy of operating. They’re fluid. I think you have to be fluid. You have to allow your staff to share information. And I don’t mean proprietary, anything that is extremely proprietary. But you have to allow your staff to be somewhat spontaneous, to say, “Oh my gosh, you’re not going to believe what happened today. Our concierge did X, Y, and Z for a guest, and that guest was so excited.” That’s a great service story.

So, allowing the management to share what’s going on at the property level is really important. And to stay fluid and flexible, to say, “Well, that’s a little bit of a wacky idea, but we’re willing to try it to see what happens with it.’”

So number one is flexibility of management to allow – in a controlled environment – spontaneity of communication.

Josiah: Very, very good. So if someone is listening to this and they’re considering hiring a PR professional, what are some questions that you would recommend they use in the selection process?

Lissa: Be really clear on expectations and goals. What will success look like for you, and what will success look like for me? And I am very clear when meeting with new clients to make sure that we’re in alignment on those two. Because if I feel that the expectations are unreasonable, chances are pretty good that I would decline taking the project on. I would at the very least be very clear in saying, I’m not sure that those are realistic deliverables. But again, it goes back to a perception out there of what PR is.

PR is difficult because it’s a little nebulous. And if you don’t have experience working with PR professionals, sometimes I’ve found that companies are not clear; they don’t really understand on a daily basis what they’re getting for their money. They want results, and the social marketing piece hasn’t helped that very much, because we’re living in this instant world of instant gratification.

But many times it takes months and months to place a story. And because they don’t see their PR professional on a daily basis, or they’re not getting clips in the mail on a daily basis, the perception may be that there’s no activity. But that’s not entirely fair. It takes a while to place these stories and to find the appropriate channels and to build relationships. So patience is a part of that. PR – unless it’s got a start and a finish – is not a quick fix.

Josiah: Excellent. Well, thank you for sharing your thoughts with us today, Lissa.

Lissa: Thank you so very much for thinking of me. I really appreciate it.

Yesterday, TripAdvisor flew me out to Las Vegas for their second Master Class conference. The event detailed TripAdvisor’s expansive owner-focused developments and suggested specific ways for hoteliers to proactively manage their reputations. Daniel and I agree: it’s a great initiative. As for the conference, here are three things that they really nailed:

1. Pre-conference modules gave hoteliers a hands-on look at TripAdvisor’s newest features.

3. Group Q&A sessions were brief and immediately followed by opportunities for in-depth one on one discussions with presenters.

Bryan Payea – TripAdvisor’s head of Industry Relations – addressed a common concern: how to react if a guest uses the prospect of a bad TripAdvisor review to ‘blackmail’ a property?

Bryan suggests that hoteliers notify TripAdvisor of the potentially biased review ahead of time, inform guests that providing them with incentives for good reviews is against TripAdvisor’s policy and – in some districts – illegal, and remember that a very small percentage of these would-be blackmailers follow through with their threats.

Five more live-tweeted lessons:

Thanks for having me, TripAdvisor; we look forward to following your progress…

Hoteliers, what do you think of these changes?

Watch part three of a video interview series I created with VFM Leonardo on the subject of content marketing:

If you would like more information on Guestsourcing, you should check out my definition and recommendations on the technique.

Today we’re joined again by Lissa Gruman, a partner at Gruman & Nicoll Public Relations specializing in getting media coverage for hotels.

This second installment of our three part-conversation explains the promotional value of stories and unique amenities, and next week’s post features her thoughts on merging traditional and new media to reach more guests. In case you missed it, here’s the first part.

Josiah: Going back to the notion of a hook or a story angle, some of the hotels that I’ve seen have received the best media coverage have some sort of unique amenity, whether it’s unique transportation or something within the hotel. And sometimes it’s really quirky. I believe there’s a hotel in Chicago that offers pet goldfish for people who are feeling lonely. They can carry a little goldfish bowl up to the room.

Do you think it’s good to design unique amenities specifically with the intention of getting media coverage, or do you feel that’s sort of gimmicky?

Lissa: I would say both. I am not above strategizing the hook or a good media story, and I have done it on any number of occasions. If that is the case, then I think that one needs to be able to fulfill the promise. I don’t think it’s fair to put something out to media, telling them that there is an amenity that you’ve created or a hotel has created, and then let them write about it and then not fulfill that promise when the guest comes to the hotel. I think it’s very fair to use those amenities to create enthusiasm for hotels, and I think as a hotel ages, it’s more important than ever.

One of my clients that I opened in 1999 is the W Hotel, specifically W Seattle, and they are now 10 years, going into their 11th year. They were originally a new build in Seattle. But we’re at that crossroads now where we’re looking at all the possible ways of crafting new and exciting stories that we can come up with and looking for partnerships, community alliances that we can tag on with that can give us a fresh new story or a fresh new angle. They happen to be very involved, much like what you’re talking about, which is Kimpton Properties with the goldfish.

At W Seattle, they’re very pet friendly. We craft pet cocktail hours where the community can bring their dog in, and we have a DJ that plays. We craft special food for the dogs and special food for the human guests. We’ve garnered a tremendous amount of press about it. You would think that the world has seen enough of pet friendly media stories, but they continue to garner interest.

In the case of someplace like the Kenwood Inn and Spa in Sonoma that has wonderfully garnered so much great media attention and just named to Condé Nast Traveler’s top small resorts in the US for the last three years, that property, in and of itself, is so beautiful and so spectacular looking that, in many ways, it’s an easy sell because it’s so beautiful.

But they also have vinotherapy, which is this grape-derived facial and body treatment. Even though that’s been around for a while, it still is of interest to journalists looking to find out more about what all this enthusiasm is for wine, whether it’s whether you drink it or whether you’re using it in topical applications.

Josiah:  Are there other major categories of story opportunities that you see hotels being able to leverage and use?

Lissa: I think trend stories. I remember for a while when the hotels were first doing wireless kinds of connections in their hotels, and the hotels that had the greatest array of technology in their hotels were newsworthy. I think finding those key points, like technology, is a good way for hotels to differentiate themselves.

The in-room amenities certainly have been… for a long time, we’ve talked about thread count on beds. We’ve talked about televisions, availabilities in the room. It could be anything from any sort of magazines or publications in the room. It could be what’s in the honor bar that’s distinguishing. Finding those things that transcend the average hotel experience into more of a lifestyle experience is what people want to write about. “Tell me something I don’t know,” is really what they’re looking for.

Josiah: Exactly. Let’s talk a little bit about how new media and the social web has affected public relations. What do you see as changes? What new opportunities or best practices would you recommend for using new media?

Lissa: It’s a whole new world out there, and everybody is still trying to wrap their arms and brains around it. The conversations come up daily. I had a long conversation last night. My perception about social media is that it is and should be one part of a comprehensive communications or marketing strategy.

I don’t think that anybody should rely on it wholly or 100%, but I do think that it is very effective to be able to communicate some short-term events, anything that has a short duration. It could be for a specific package or a rate… it’s a terrific way to reveal recognitions, whether they be awards, any sort of high profile media coverage. They’re terrific for giveaways. Use it to highlight targeted conversations within the hotel. If there’s a trend or something that’s happening, that’s good.

The part with social media that people are trying to figure out, and specifically business, is how do you become relevant with social media so that you’re not always talking about yourself and that you’re engaging. Because if you continually talk about yourself, you’ll turn people off.

Best practices should dictate that one or two people only are the people that are covering social media for a particular hotel or a business, and they are very clear about the parameters of what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate to portray or to discuss or to reveal. And if nothing else, there should be a gatekeeper of information, one person that really rubber stamps what goes out there and what doesn’t go out there.

In my case, for many of my clients, we write the social media piece for them. We allow them to supplement it if they want to. Certainly, we ask for them to provide us with content, but they, in some cases, want to hand that off to somebody. They have other areas of their business that they want to manage.

In other cases, the hotels want to do it on property, and that’s very effective as well, because they’re seeing of the moment activities and of the moment interests that they are in the best position to coordinate and to communicate.

Social marketing is great. I don’t believe it’s the only method or mode that should be used. It works really well with traditional press releases and traditional communications, and everything, for me anyway, is integrated. So in the case of Kenwood Inn and Spa, for example, with this new award with Condé Nast Traveler, we put a press release out there that this had happened, but we also supplemented that with tweeting and with Facebook, and that is very effective.

You had also asked me about how to create direct to consumer news releases, and that’s a really great way to utilize blogs. Blogs are terrific consumer news pieces that a hotel can communicate to their constituency base in a way that is lively and engaging and entertaining. Blogs are terrific for that.

That said, blogs need to have rich content. They need to be stimulating. They need to be provocative in the most professional way, but not just boring, boring, boring, because you’ll turn off your consumer at that point in time.

Thank you, Lissa!

[Check back next week to learn how to reach more guests by integrating new and traditional media.]

Watch part two of a video interview series I created with VFM Leonardo on the subject of content marketing:

If you would like more information on the topic, you should check out my free guide to content marketing.