Your thoughts on hotels using Facebook (3 examples)
8 Comments
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.
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I am working for a company that is highly dependent on the actual brand image. Hence we have used every form of new, alternative communication platform available. That includes the likes of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Future Blog and TripAdvisor among many others.
Looking at our statistics it is obvious that most of those social media platform do not help to create ancillary bookings but rather strengthening the brand and it’s image.
Therefore social media sites such as FB should be used for that purpose only. Boost your brand!
People’s main purpose to use those sites are not to book hotel rooms but rather to stay in touch with each other.
Hi Josiah,
Thank you so much for your thoughts.
I don’t know how much % of potencial clients will be influenced by a friend that become a fan of our hotels. The true is that if a friend doens’t even know that a brand called Tiara Hotels & Resorts exists, it will be quite hardo to know that is an option to him if he goes to any destination that we have hotels.
Hospitality isn’t the best example on getting “out” of the closet regarding its exposure. Even more with 2.0 and social web tools. It’s a industry marked with the “classic and tradicional” labels, so you don’t get to see too many big chains or hotels out there.
Our particular goal in Facebook is to engage with clients and potencial ones, and not properly to drive an amount of bookings that otherwise we wouldn’t get.
thank you so much for your quoting me! I also wrote a blog post early February asking some other questions… like where can you find real brand presence on facebook, and just some other questions. If you want… Would love feedback. The final questions in the post sound a bit naive, but I am looking more for an interactive and embedded brand presence rather than the seemingly static pages (even though you have video, etc). Anyhoo.. I need more coffee so I will cut this short. =)
http://www.hrabaconsulting.com/blog/2009/02/05/facebook-users-your-brand-presence/
I think, social media such as Facebook should be used to build up brand image, and reservations will follow after some time. It is a great tool, if hotel is able to get ‘friends’ or ‘fans’ who have stayed with them, and share their experiences. This will help improve services and in turn increase in bookings. But patience will be the virtue…
Great Article – we are running a few AB Social Media tests on our Travel related websites and will revert back with findings.
To add… Facebook traffic is not targeted traffic, but you do get to use it to get people exposed to, and even talking about your brand… if you have a great offer, people can even spread the word about you on their own and you get viral traffic.
There are 3 necessary elements that are key to a successful social marketing/networking campaign.
1. Continuously grow your network.
2. Keep adding great content that people will like, appreciate and find useful.
3. Interact.
Instead of posting information about your services, your hotel, your promos and rates… talk about the destination… what is in the area of the hotel that tourists can do, what are the sights to be seen, food to be tried, activities to participate in, spots to visit and get photos as… SELL the destination, then tie-in your offer / promo at your hotel to people whose interests in that destination you had caught.
In the mid 90s I used this strategy for a small regional airline… they needed a campaign to promote their flights… instead of key messages being about them, we focused on selling the destinations which were tourist spots and vacation resorts that the major airlines did not serve.
great piece, its surely an experiement which works after a few months of understanding your customer base and what they want and how they react .
The hoteliers should therefore be encouraged to always have their check out guests join the facebook fan pages so that we get a targetted demographic to work with ,this further increases engagement by more than 50% ,tried and tested case studies are available with us.