In the past 2 years, Indigo Pearl Resort witnessed a clear shift in its market mix: Growing from a heavy reliance on tour operators to direct bookings and online channels. Micheal Nurbatlain and the team at Indigo Pearl led this growth by developing a presence in a variety of channels, with Facebook emerging as one of the biggest successes. In just one year, Michael grew the resort’s Facebook fan page to more than 8,000 followers. This case study shares the lessons learned from this process.

First, a little background

The Indigo Pearl Resort is an independent, luxury design property located in Phuket, Thailand.  Michael joined the resort as a sales manager, but this role quickly expanded to include managing digital marketing, e-commerce, and social media.

While Michael is running a number of interesting projects right now, we decided to focus on his work in Facebook for this case study . “While Twitter is beginning to gain popularity here in Asia, Facebook has nearly complete market adoption with our customers.”

Indigo Pearl Resort’s Facebook page

The Facebook page for Indigo Pearl Resort uses a mix of custom design and standard pages. Note the little details in how they engage with their fans:

But what really makes their Facebook presence stand out is their approach to special promotions.

Facebook contests: the key to growth

“Last September we wanted to give something to our Facebook fans,” said Michael. At the time, they had about 3,000 fans, and decided to create a photo contest around what symbolizes Indigo Pearl.

Fans were asked to post pictures, and then vote on their favorites. But Facebook contacted them, saying the contest setup violated terms and conditions. This forced them to setup an independent voting scheme allowing their fans to vote, which worked even better in the end. The contest generated great interaction among existing fans, strengthening their online community. Additionally, the contest generated a couple of hundred of new fans – which was a considered a great success at that time.

Latest Facebook contest: Ultimate holiday package

This year’s idea was to setup a new system. Rather than just asking fans to submit pictures, they wanted to add another layer of involvement. Michael and Indigo Pearl Resort asked fans to design their dream 3-day holiday package. What would they like to do in Puket? They were not very strict with the guidelines, so that if someone wrote some poetry about the perfect holiday – for example – it was still accepted as an entry.

“I imagined Mercedes running a promotion around designing your dream car. Although I’m a big fan of cars, I wouldn’t know what horsepower to put in or the details of the engine. While our guests travel a lot, they are not hoteliers, so it would be somewhat difficult for them to come up with a breakdown package of all the amenities – so we left it very open.”

They didn’t buy any Facebook ads or spend much time promoting the contest. Micheal worked a bit with the local media to get mentioned on their websites, and sent out some tweets to promote it. But no other PR or press releases – everything was done though Facebook.

“Within days we had 10-15 entries, and then we started to get a snowball effect from there.” They asked fans to send in their pictures, screened them, and placed the photos in the album called “Ultimate Family Package.” Once the photo was approved, the contest participants could ask their friends and family to vote on their entry.

This is what created a viral marketing effect for the resort – one photo had over 1,000 likes. “It surpassed our expectations and we could hardly believe it!”

Lessons learned from the contests

It’s all about planning. “Have a solid plan when it comes to Facebook, and create an editorial calendar. Be very strict about creating and following deadlines.” Too many people just wake up in the morning and try to create content on the fly.  “If there is no solid plan for 3-12 months, it’s difficult to consistently deliver good quality results.”

Always respond and interact with your online community. Don’t get arrogant and forget to thank fans. “I think you should thank every single person who contributes to your Facebook page or Twitter account – whether than have 5 friends or 5,000 followers. Each fan is an immense asset to your community.”

Have more than one prize. Last year the prize was a 7-night stay in a suite. “But if one guy in the contest has 1,000 votes for his entry, other people could be discouraged from participating.” This year, having two good prizes encouraged more people to enter the contest.

An “economy of photos” and additional thoughts

• Photos are the lifeblood of Facebook. As Guy Kawasaki says, Facebook is a pictures economy. “Often I just put a picture of our sunset or property, and it gets me a few hundred Likes and 30-50 comments. A few times I’ve spent hours creating a huge post, and it doesn’t get nearly the same levels of feedback as that beach picture gets. Sometimes the easy route gets the best results.”
• Avoid constantly bombarding fans with Facebook promotions. For every 20 posts, put only one promotional post if you must include sales messages.
• “Instead, develop the art of soft selling. Create and share images, experiences, smells, and tastes that represent your brand.”
• Act as an online concierge on Facebook and Twitter, helping people by providing answers and suggestions.
• Try to reflect the hotel’s personality without being too flamboyant. There has to be class, but presented in a very accessible way.

Thank you, Michael!

Become a fan of Indigo Pearl Resort on Facebook, follow @_IndigoPearl_ on Twitter, and connect with Michael on LinkedIn here.

I’m pleased to announce the publishing of my newest marketing guide in collaboration with ReviewPro:

A Hotel’s Guide to Facebook

Download this PDF guide now to learn all you need to know about promoting your hotel on Facebook:

• Statistics on how people use Facebook today
• What does (and doesn’t) work on Facebook
• Five different approaches to Facebook
• New developments to be aware of
• How to design an engaging brand page
• Moving beyond setup: integrating Facebook with your website
• Best practices for running promotions on Facebook
• Case studies from outside the hotel industry
• Reputation management considerations for Facebook
• Putting it all together: Action steps for planning your Facebook strategy

Get more information and download the guide now >>

If your hotels are focused on targeting corporate clients, is social media worth your time? Should you take a slightly different approach to social marketing than hotels that primarily target leisure guests?

I was asked about this a number of times at ITB last week, and want to show how the social web can help you attract the business traveler.

Reviews are universally important

Online hotel reviews written by guests play an important role in the buying decision across all types of travel. This is because they affect someone’s purchase decision at the final stage of the buying process. (A study showed 35% of social media users changed their choice of hotel after reading online reviews.) Since business travelers often know the exact destination they will be in, they often skip the “dreaming” stage of travel planning and jump straight to reviews.

So do all you can to encourage more positive online reviews. You will probably get the fastest return on investment here.

Social media increases your findability

Corporate travel is booked through a variety of ways: some executives have their assistants do it, some use corporate contracts arranged by someone else in the organization, and some business travelers book their own hotel rooms.

Whenever you have a fragmented audience of decision makers like this, it’s important to build your overall web visibility to enable discovery.

Google, Bing and other search engines have confirmed increased inclusion of social media activity in their ranking algorithms. Twitter and Facebook communication, along with the quantity and quality of your online reviews, affect how high you rank for important keywords. Remember, only 3% of web searchers will go beyond page 1 of results pages – so it’s imperative you show up near the top.

Business travelers are people, too

Everyone traveling on business knows that there’s work and then there’s play. People will continue to engage with their social networks while on a business trip. In fact, travelers tend to stay connected more if they’re on business – they are less likely to unplug completely.

This makes engaging with them on sites like Twitter, Gowalla, and Facebook just as important as ever. Publishing articles on your blog about things to do in the area is a good starting point – increasing your overall web visibility, making it presence in search engines larger.

How are you using the social web to attract more corporate travel?

As we begin to understand the value of endorsements and recommendations on the social web, it will be interesting to see how hotels incentive these.

One concept proposed at PhoCusWright@ITB 2011 townhall brainstorming: What if you offered a discount code that people could only receive by scanning a QR code with their mobile phones, opting in to receive updates via SMS text message, checking into the establishment using Gowalla or Foursquare, and notifying their friends via Facebook and Twitter?

How much of a discount would you provide to gain that level of permission and coverage on the social web? Would the discount be tied to influence scores like Klout?

This morning I got together with Henry, Michael, Lisa, and RJ for breakfast and brainstormed a little about the future of social media. Here’s some ideas from the conversation:

1. On Facebook, less can be more. Don’t overwhelm your fans with content. Try to determine the culture of your fanbase, and what they expect from you on Facebook and in social media. Ask them – don’t assume. Then produce and deliver that content.
2. People like to engage with hotel brands that fit their lifestyle or identity. It’s easier to build a Facebook presence around a group of hotels than an individual property.
3. For hotel groups, the primary use of social media could be in quality management instead of just marketing (like it is at some small individual properties).  Social media and reviews can act as a “24/7 mystery shopper” for you.
4. Good idea from Lisa: Kimpton noticed they received a lot of complaints about their parking fees, so they posted the fee prominently on their website, and also created a parking package for guests. My takeaway: Mitigate a perceived weakness by setting expectations appropriately.

This year will be the end of the social media “expert,” and the rise of the practitioner. The professional that gets stuff done. The company that sees technology as only a means to an end – a tool for doing a better job at what they’ve been doing all along.

The value of an idea is only as good as its implementation. The hotels and organizations that succeed with new media are the ones that spend less time planning and more time listening, serving, and changing.

In Social Media Examiner’s 30 Social Media Trends post, Jason Falls shares his thoughts on this:

“Business will demand more business-driving proof, readers will demand more substance to blogs and those who are practitioners will have to demand excellence out of themselves. This will go a long way in cleaning up the industry, in my opinion. The ‘gurus’ will fade away while the practitioners excel. If you aren’t moving the needle, you’re done.”

What are you working on?

(Seriously, I want to hear about your projects. We’re only publishing stories of ideas in action from now on. So tell us!)

[Photo credit: daily sunny]

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.]

Smart marketers know the best way to drive action is to make perceived value exceed perceived risk. That’s why email subscription rates increase when you give away something (like a free guide) in exchange for someone’s email address (permission to send the requested content).

The same principle is true on Facebook.

By using FBML – the Facebook coding language – you can create “hidden” content that is only visible when someone becomes a fan of your page.

What incentives could you offer to encourage people to become a fan of your hotel’s Facebook fan page?

• City guides?
• Insider access?
• A discount coupon?
• A value-added incentive that doesn’t cut profit margins?

Some examples of this

According to ClickZ, Levi’s picked up 45,000 “likers” by hosting a fan-only concert:

Levi’s brought in rock band Nada Surf to perform live via the company’s Facebook page on Oct. 23 and picked up around 45,000 “Likers” in the process. To push the branded content event, Levi’s purchased Facebook.com ads leading into last weekend, while the copy encouraged viewers to hit the “Like” button in order to watch the concert.

And as detailed in an earlier story we did, Hotel Seven in Paris offers the very lowest rate available to their Facebook fans. (Screenshot above)

Want to add this to your page?

HyperArts posted some code to support this, and John Jantsch posted a good technical how-to article on Duct Tape Marketing. If you’re implementing the functionality yourself I encourage you to check those out – otherwise just start planning what giveaway you could offer to encourage fans joining your Facebook page.

It seems Klout is receiving a lot of attention and buzz recently, and for good reason. If you’re not familiar with their concept yet, they provide a way to measure a person’s influence on the social web. The explanation from their website is probably best:

The scores range from 1 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score.

True Reach is the size of your engaged audience and is based on those of your followers and friends who actively listen and react to your messages. Amplification Score is the likelihood that your messages will generate actions (retweets, @messages, likes and comments) and is on a scale of 1 to 100. Network score indicates how influential your engage audience is and is also on a scale from 1 to 100. The Klout score is highly correlated to clicks, comments and retweets.

I’m not a celebrity….

…but apparently I’m a niche specialist:

I’ll take that.

How you should use influence scoring when providing service

The value of using influence scoring measurements such as Klout when managing a social media campaign is not to provide different quality levels of service. The consumer of today is clearly more empowered than ever before. Discriminating on how well you solve problems for people is short-sighted, if not downright stupid.

However, I believe it’s useful to provide different kinds of service in different situations.

For example: Influence scoring is useful in determining who in your organization should be involved in the response and followup action. Do you need to bring in the PR director or another department manager? Who needs to be involved to provide the best resolution for the consumer and your company?

I’d like to hear your thoughts in the comments below:

How are you using Klout? What role do you think influence scoring should play in social media service and online reputation management?

ReviewPro announces Klout integration

Today ReviewPro announced integration of Klout influence scores with their social media monitoring tool. [Tnooz story] I think any hotel looking to increase their online visibility should monitor as many (relevant) metrics as possible in planning big-picture strategy and also day-to-day actions. Klout scoring gives us one more reference point for these decisions.