Comments on: Your thoughts on hotels using Facebook (3 examples)

By: avijit arya

avijit arya — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 00:17:06 +0000

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.

By: Roy Sencio

Roy Sencio — Sat, 08 May 2010 19:37:00 +0000

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.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 05 May 2010 17:35:05 +0000

Great Article – we are running a few AB Social Media tests on our Travel related websites and will revert back with findings.

By: Madhukar Shah

Madhukar Shah — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 13:33:02 +0000

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…

By: Facebook for Hotels - What are we trying to achieve? So far… seems to be nothing. » Hraba Hospitality Consulting

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:56:35 +0000

[...] their advertising program… because we know that doesn’t work. No conversion tracking, Lack of results, users not seeking advertising, and the Social Media Ad Model is broken anyway). You can only [...]

By: Michael Hraba

Michael Hraba — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:13:23 +0000

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/

By: Nuno Valinhas

Nuno Valinhas — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 10:38:02 +0000

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.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 09:41:25 +0000

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.