Social Media Means Business For Hotels

The State of Social Media in the Travel Industry.

In 2013, the amount of time people spent on digital media overtook that spent watching television. And although online review channels, such as TripAdvisor, are gaining in popularity, people still prefer to receive recommendations from people they know – social media channels give travelers the best of both worlds. In a recent study commissioned by Facebook, Deloitte concluded with the following findings:

• 83% of people use the internet while on vacation
• 33% of people use Facebook while on vacation
• 48% of people post vacation photos to Facebook when they return home
• 50% of people have liked a travel brand on Facebook
• The most popular travel brands consumers like are hotels and airlines

What These Social Media Stats Mean for Hotels?

With digital channels ranking second only to friend and family as a source for travel ideas, hotels can  utilize the traffic and trust these social channels offer. As travelers use social media throughout their customer journey – from inspiration to research and trip planning; while on property and after their vacation – hotels now have the opportunity to capture their target audience’s attention in multiple stages of the consumer purchase flow.

Making Sure Your Hotel’s Social Media Marketing is a Success!

As social media or digital channels continue to grow in terms of consumer usage and marketing power, hotels need to switch their perception of these avenues as social channels and start treating these as sophisticated business avenues. To do that, hotels should:

1. Use business metrics vs. social metrics by evaluating the value of a “like”, “share”, or “follow” – measuring the number of each of these social metrics is meaningless unless it can be connected to a larger business goal.
2. Know your target audience and fine-tune your hotel’s social media strategy to attract quality vs. quantity. Having a million unengaged followers who don’t  ever plan to visit your area is worthless compared to 100 highly engaged followers that are most likely to book a stay at your hotel.
3. Make use of data from social channels to effectively target your audience based on their preferences. This allows hotels to minimize cost and maximize marketing effectiveness.
4. Identify and assign social agents at the property who can provide a robust exposure across all marketing channels.

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Contributed by:
Krista Malchow, Regional Business Development Manager
Teresa Villaruz, Senior Marketing Manager
Genoveva Petrova, Senior Manager – Social Media

Resource: http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/Consumer-Business/gx-cb-thl-facebook-digital-channels-travel.pdf