My post last week about Facebook for hotel marketing attracted a lot of interest. There was some helpful discussion by hotel marketers with real-world examples, and I’d like to share some of the comments with you…

Nuno Valinhas of Tiara Hotels:

Our strategy of promotion in the social media environment is no more than “to get outside”, “to be visible” and to try to reach more and more potential clients. Beside our offline Marketing campaigns and actions, the social media networks able us with a cost of ZERO to somehow influence and engage more people to get to know our brand/name as well as our hotel, and their locations. We’ve a facebook fan page that is still starting. Personally I share the same opinion than you, Facebook isn’t the best tool to generate more reservations. But in the same way that you become a fan of anything, you also can be a fan of Tiara Hotels & Resorts, and with that, your friends and connections will get to know us.

My reply: I’m not yet convinced that this type of awareness will increase reservations. I have hundreds of Facebook ‘friends’ and most of them are fans of several organizations. Am I aware when they become a fan of a new business? Usually not. Does it influence my travel plans? Never.

John Beckley of SortedSites:

I think facebook business pages should be on the portfolio of Social Media sites that Hotels use. I disagree that this is for a younger crowd, one of our Resort clients facebook page has 60% over 35years old. Interestingly enough 70% are women.

Too many times I see Facebook pages being too dormant. Hotel staff should be involved, upload photos, videos, create events and make sure that this is another place for your guests to leave a review or offer feedback.

My reply: Yes, business pages should be in the toolkit of any social media marketer…just maybe lower on the priority list. I also agree that if Facebook is going to be used, it needs interaction. Thanks for sharing your resort client example. There are older people using Facebook, and if your target demographic uses it – then by all means you need to be there.

Michael Hraba of Hraba Consulting:

I ran some low level ad experiments with some fairly reputable boutique hotels I work with, and the results of FB “highly targeted” marketing with their ad model was… laughable. People just don’t click on internet ads anymore. There is actually something called “banner blindness” to the ad guys.

Only when I stopped trying to promote it and let them sit, organically get discovered, and now have 100’s of fans. But still…. they don’t actually *DO* anything. They don’t interact in meaningful ways. They certainly don’t book rooms off the FB page. They might book elsewhere, then chat about their next stay on FB…. but there isn’t any meaningful traffic through to the booking engine, to say the least. I wouldn’t spend a dime, but I think you need to at least have a page there. Just let it reinforce the brand, be another place with your link, and another point of accessibility for guests.

My reply: Interesting campaign result with Facebook PPC ads. I’ve had the same results, and I think hoteliers should avoid running paid campaigns there.

In summary, I know Facebook can be used to communicate with guests and build your web presence, I just think it’s not most efficient way of doing that. If you have the time, by all means put up a page: it can’t hurt. Just be realistic on the benefits you will receive, and don’t rely on it for increasing your bookings.

I love Facebook…for personal use. It’s a great way for me to stay in touch with friends and family around the world. Its media sharing tools have greatly improved over the last few years, and it has taken the place of the majority of my personal email.

So why don’t I like Facebook for hotel marketing? Because I look at the numbers, and it’s not effective in generating new bookings. Most hotels we’ve worked with at Gradigio achieve much higher ROI from other social media networks.

With that in mind, there are a couple cases when Facebook may be a viable marketing option for your organization.

1) If you’re a hostel or targeting the under-30 crowd. In social media marketing, it’s all about demographics. You need to know who your target audience is, and then build a presence on those networks. Facebook has grown from the days when you needed an academic email address to join, but it remains a younger network. Quantcast shows 78% of the sites’ users are under 34 years old. If you are a luxury leisure property, this probably isn’t the place to be.

Chart courtesy of Quantcast.com

2) If you’re a larger hotel chain looking to build an application. Several travel companies have built very successful apps for the Facebook platform that spread quickly virally. But due to development cost and market size, this would only work well if you have a number of properties over a large geographic area. Users won’t install an app from one hotel unless it helped them elsewhere.

Recent updates in the Facebook interface have made the platform more conducive to the real-time sharing of information and media. This is a positive development for hotel marketers, but the platform still remains not the best time investment for most properties.

Hotels can achieve higher ROI by focusing on social media networks that reach potential guests in the decision making stage of the buying cycle. Not many travel planners use Facebook in their research process. They do check guest-written hotel reviews and user-produced media. Efforts to cultivate those are much more effective.