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Navigating the social media landscape

Social media is changing the hospitality marketing landscape and allowing hotels to interact with current and potential guests like never before. ALB asked experts and brands how to optimize a social media network for success

Social media is the fastest-grow-ing internet marketing tool and it has become a critical one for

the hospitality industry.Hotels that are utilizing social

media are able to interact with customers like never before and are reaping hefty benefits in online placement and revenue.

Many brands utilize popular websites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TripAdvisor, and Flickr while others have developed their own unique sites.

Mariana Mechoso Safer, senior director of marketing for Hospital-ity eBusiness Strategies, said social media allows hotels to not only con-nect with current customers but also future potential customers.

“Social media allows hotels to differentiate themselves from the competition,” she said.

Margaret Mastrogiacomo, social media specialist with Hospitality eBusiness Strategies, said social me-dia works well for the customer and service-oriented hotel industry.

“You’re building that customer relationship through social media,” she said. “It’s more than just selling hard products, you’re building that guest experience online.”

Getting StartedThe large social media universe can sometimes be complex and tough to

By Jonathan Springston, AAHOA

Lodging Business

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cerned – from small, hyper-focused private online communities - with our partner Communispace - to a public online community - Prior-ity Club Connect for Priority Club Reward members - to active pres-ences across Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, among others,” Nick Ayres, manager of social marketing, distribution and relationship mar-

keting for InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), said.

“We’re also working at the hyper-local level via location-based marketing with programs like our Topguest partnership, where we award Priority Club Reward mem-bers 50 Priority Club Reward points for their virtual check-ins to any of our properties globally.” he added.

Ayres said IHG hotels have been tinkering with social media for a number of years.

“While not every property is actively building out a following on

say Twitter or Facebook, we do have several properties who have found social media to be a viable outlet through which they can engage their guests in a personal way with things like unique content, special deals and promotions,” he said. “In addition to the activity of our indi-vidual properties, our global brands are digging in as well and working

to build advocacy within a host of social spaces.”

Best Western has a strong presence on Facebook, Twit-ter and YouTube and actively maintains blogs like www.youmustbetrippin.com and www.onthegowithamy.com, ac-cording to Troy Rutman, director of external communications for Best Western.

“At the hotel level, we offer our owner-operators digital consulting services to help them craft an effective online pres-

ence,” Rutman said. “This includes everything from SEO [search engine optimization] and social networking to reputation management in hotel review forums.”

Certain Wyndham brands like Howard Johnson and Baymont Inn & Suites first started experimenting with social media in 2009, accord-ing to Rosanne Zusman, senior vice president of brand marketing for the Wyndham Hotel Group.

“Since that time, we’ve seen more and more of them move into the space in one way or another,” she

It’s clear from talking with the different brands that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to social media marketing

navigate for hoteliers who are new to the concept.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Mile-stone Internet Marketing and Ameri-can Hotel & Lodging Association Ed-ucational Institute in 2010 released the latest edition of the book Hotels to HTMLs.

In it, authors Benu and Anil Aggarwal break down social media into seven different categories called channels: video sites (YouTube); social networks (Facebook, Twitter); blogs; bookmarking sites (Digg); traveler reviews (Expedia, Orbitz); photosharing (Flickr); and news and PR articles.

For hotels that are not currently involved with social media but are interested, the book suggests they begin carving out a presence on the popular social media sites. “The main social media objectives for these hotels should be to establish a presence in the main social media channels and use simple marketing techniques to create a network of fans and friends.”

“Before they even set up their presence on social media, [hoteliers] need to set up a social media strat-egy and set benchmarks,” Mas-trogiacomo said. “Once they have these in place, then it’s important to delegate responsibilities. Once they have a strategy in place and an action plan, then they can set up their presence on the platform they feel is best.”

For hotels that are farther along, the HTMLs recommend cross-networking each of their social media channels.

“Make sure that the social media icons are displayed clearly on your website so that consum-ers can get to those channels,” Hotels to HTMLs says. “Flickr should be interlinked to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Similarly, make sure that you are linking Twitter and YouTube to your Facebook account. Cross-linking the channels will help you in optimization as well as in expanding your network.”

It’s clear from talking with the different brands that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to social media marketing.

“Our approach really runs the gamut as far as platforms are con-

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said. “This past year was first year where most of our brands saw sig-nificant participation in some type of social media channel.”

Zusman noted that Wyndham brands like Howard Johnson, Ra-mada and Super 8 use social media according to specific needs and ob-jectives determined by the property owner.

Carlson began dabbling in social media in its Americas hotels in 2009.

“At the brand level, we have our blog, www.talkofthecountry.com, our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/countryinns, and we are active on Twitter as well, www.twitter.com/countryinns,” Aurora Toth, vice president of marketing for Carl-son, said. “Our hotels in the Ameri-cas manage their own accounts, and we offer training to help them get started.”

Managing ChannelsOnce hotels have set up their social network, they should decide how to operate and maintain it.

“The key to social media opti-mization is to be actively involved in these channels,” Hotels to HTMLs

says. “A few hotels have a full-time resource dedicated to managing their social media channels. At a minimum, you will need to allocate an hour a day to make sure that the channels you are using are effec-tive.”

The Best Western external com-munications and eCommerce teams

collaborate to continually monitor and strengthen their social media networks.

“In the last several years, Best Western leadership has set a clear course to make thoughtful, disci-plined investments in the social media platforms that are relevant to our family brand,” Rutman said. “As the online medium demands, there

is also a major customer care compo-nent in our web activity.”

Zusman said responsibility for Wyndham’s social media varies by brand.

“It is most often a collaborative effort between internal departments such as marketing and customer service as well as external resources such as agencies,” she said.

Ayres said the IHG approach is a combination of individual point persons acting alone and interde-

Baymont Inn & Suites currently uses Facebook as one of several channels to advertise its latest promotions and sweepstakes

Once hotels have set up their social network, they should decide how to operate and maintain it

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partmental collaboration.“We do have a small number

of people in the organization who are explicitly responsible for social media programs but there are several functions like PR and com-munications where social media plays a part in their day-to-day roles and responsibilities but is not their primary or exclusive responsibility,” he said. “Our belief is that in order for social media to really become an embedded part of our organiza-tion, we need to distribute it where it makes sense.”

Socializing and Promoting Channels

“Across all social media channels, the goal is for the hotel to be part of a

group that shares common interests with the hotel - destination informa-tion, events in your market, your initiatives such as going green [or] pet-friendly - so that the hotel can constantly interact with the group and offer value,” Hotels to HTMLs says.

The book suggests becoming a fan of relevant groups and business-es on the social media channels and then try to offer something exclusive

The goal is for the hotel to be part of a group that shares common interests with the hotel

to that group. One example from Hotels to HTMLs is to become a fan of Disneyland on Facebook and of-fer specials to that group.

The Aggarwals offer a number of suggestions for how hotels should promote their channels, including polls, “Tips of the Day,” fun facts about the hotel, vaca-tion packages, hotel perks, and discussions of the latest initiatives, among others.

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“Our brands engage guests through a variety of means ranging from site-specific special offers and contests to online games, video content and polls,” Zusman said of Wyndham.

Rutman said Best Western uses a balance of promotions and giveaways with entertain-ing and useful content.

Tracking Customer Feedback

Obviously, hotels can put all the information they want on social media sites but if no one bothers to track feedback, the effort seems wasted.

“It’s not just about actively posting on the fan page but proactively monitoring the buzz,” Mastrogiacomo said. “The number one mistake that the hotel can make is not monitoring the buzz on social media. What guests are saying about you affects the perception of your hotel.”

Rutman said Best Western is always in “listen mode.”

“We respond to individual guests where appropriate and track our overall share of online conver-sation via monitoring tools that scan blogs, reviews, networking sites, and so on,” he said.

Wyndham has brand teams and customer care staff that collaborate to address feedback individually,

transferring the conversation away from the web and finding a swift resolution.

“From a hotel perspective, we educate our franchisees on how best to respond and resolve to comments and reviews on user generated content sites but allow each hotel to take the lead on how and when they want to respond,” she said. “With regards to tracking, we are

currently in the process of identifying a long-term solu-tion for better tracking and measurement.”

Ayres said IHG is still working to nail down best practices for tracking feed-back. He noted that a negative comment on Twitter should be handled differently than a positive review on a blog.

“The teams who need the information are different, the timing of the response is likely to be different, and so on,” he said. “Ultimately, we want each guest to get the best response from the most appropriate touch point – whether that’s a hotel general manager [or] a global brand representative. There are a variety of systems and platforms we’re working on integrating to best en-able us to take advantage of and respond to the cloud of conversation we know exists about our brands, properties and company.”

Toth said Carlson tries to re-spond quickly to customer feedback but are working on best practices.

“We are still in the infancy of our social media experience and are working with agencies to help us track and monitor at the brand level,” she said.

Processing and Analyzing Customer

FeedbackBrands place a great deal of emphasis on feedback generated through so-cial media as it plays into investment decisions hotels believe will reduce complaints and problems while in-creasing loyalty.

Safer said handling negative feedback the right way through so-cial media can have a big impact on many people.

“The hotel provides feedback and people’s attitude turns around right away,” she said. “That’s great because not just the person who is upset sees that feedback, but every-one sees how much the brand cares.”

Mastrogiacomo said hotels should take the time to respond to

Howard Johnson was one of the first Wyndham Hotel Group brands to make its way onto social media sites like Facebook and continues to build a strong fan base with fun comments, videos, brand promotions and more

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negative feedback but also share the positive feedback.

“It’s important to respond to brand ambassadors as well, reaching out and saying we’re so happy you enjoyed your stay,” she said. “Keep the conversation going. Ask them questions about what they did on their trip and how they liked their experience.”

Rutman said Best Western President and CEO David Kong has personally read thousands of guest

feedback cards during his tenure.“Feedback through social media

certainly increases the reach of both positive and negative comments, and we’ve invested intelligently to remain aware and responsive in those channels,” Rutman said. “In many situations, guest complaints are best resolved at the local level, between the owner-operator and the guest. If that becomes unlikely, the

can be a leading indicator, chances are if there’s a problem or an oppor-tunity that is on our guests’ collec-tive radar in a significant fashion, it will show up in social media as well as a host of other feedback chan-nels,” Ayres said. “If it doesn’t, we need to take a hard look at whether the social chatter is really a repre-

sentative thread or not and do our diligence to understand

its overall level of im-portance.”

“We place great value in knowing and

understanding what consumers are

thinking and saying about our brands, whether

it’s through social media, the press, customer care or some other channel,” Zusman said of Wynd-ham. “Their feedback, along with the feedback and comments from our franchisees, is just one of many items we consider when updating or implementing new brand standards. In every instance, we want to find the solution that’s not only the right thing to do by our consumers but the right thing to do by our franchisees.”

Determining best practices for analyzing customer feedback is still a work in progress as the social media environment continues to change.

“Social media is yet one more channel in which consumers have a voice to publicly express their pleas-ure or dissatisfaction with a product or a brand,” Zusman said. “As such, proactively monitoring and address-ing their concerns in this space is becoming increasingly important to managing a brand’s reputation.”

Wyndham utilizes different on-line tools to monitor feedback about its brands and is working to develop tools to measure the effectiveness of their social media strategy.

“We put a lot of effort into helping Best Western hoteliers understand and benefit from social media,” Rutman said. “It’s still a new arena and everyone is trying to figure out how to define ‘success.’ We rely on a combination of qualita-tive and quantitative metrics, doing a post-mortem on each online initia-tive to quickly adjust our strategy

Determining best practices for analyzing customer feedback is still a work in progress

brand may step in. In large part, though, our owners and guests are

best served by the intensive training Best Western provides to its mem-bers, the goal of which is to help hoteliers prevent problems before they arise.”

For IHG, Ayres said hotels like to “triangulate” feedback from social media with feedback that arrives from more traditional channels of feedback like phone and e-mail.

“While we’ve found social media

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based on [lessons learned]. Staying nimble is key, as is recognizing that social media is no longer just a Gen Y game.”

Ayres said it is important at IHG to listen to brand feedback on a daily basis, a balance that he describes as both an art and a science.

“Our goal is not to create an entirely separate set of measure-ments that do not lead back to what’s important to the broader business,” he said. “Social media programs should be able to demonstrate and translate their value to the business in the same ways as any other pro-gram. To best do that, we know there will be times when we need to look a little more closely at the numbers and times we need to look a little more broadly across longitudinal qualitative insights but the key is un-derstanding both are important and both should be a map to our vision of delivering ‘Great Hotels Guests Love.’”

Costs and FundingFunding for social media at the brand level remains a small part of the overall hotel marketing budget. But as social media becomes a more popular tool for marketing, brands are finding reasons to increase funding.

“Social media cuts across so many functional areas, which is not how traditional budgeting proc-esses operate,” Ayres said. “We have significant buy in across the organization in the need to focus on the social media opportunity, so we are seeing significantly higher

levels of funding for 2011 than we did for 2010.”

“Like most marketers, the social media space is one that we’re still just beginning to work into our larg-er marketing efforts,” Zusman said. “As such, our spending against so-cial media remains a very small part of the larger marketing budget. How quickly we’ll begin to see increases in that spending is likely dependent upon how consumers continue to use this medium and how soon we can find ways to accurately measure and attribute its value.”

Tracking Return On Investment (ROI)

Hotels to HTMLs argues track-ing ROI generated through social media channels is difficult because “the conversion from social media marketing efforts occurs on chan-nels different from the social media channels.”

“For example, most clients will

Increased engagement is the short term ROI

book rooms on a hotel website or over the phone, even though they found the hotel on Facebook or on Twitter,” the Hotels to HTMLs says.

Hotels can use website analyti-cal tools to track web traffic to the social media channels and track the number of customers who went from the channels to the hotel booking engine.

“As technology advances, we are

positive that there will be ways to measure actual ROI and social media optimization effectiveness more ac-curately,” the Hotels to HTMLs says. “Hoteliers who want to be ahead of the curve should invest today in the media that is fast emerging as the future of Internet marketing.”

Mastrogiacomo argues ROI from the social media program is not necessarily measured in dollars and cents in the short term.

“The ROI [hoteliers] should be looking for in the short term is increased engagement,” she said. “Are people posting on your walls and asking about availability? Is there an ongoing conversation? Are you generating a lot of buzz on the platform?”

“Keep in mind short- term ROI leads in the long-term to brand engagement,” she said. “You’re go-ing to be the first hotel that comes to mind.”