Melia Hotels scores half a million Facebook fans

Meliá Hotels International has reached half a million fans on Facebook, making it the hotel group with the third largest Facebook presence worldwide, behind Hilton and Starwood.

The Spanish company has created a department to create and maintain its social networking presence on Facebook, as well as Twitter, Google+, Youtube and Flickr.

It now has nine Facebook profiles – one for each of its brands and a corporate profile for the company as a whole. Meliá believes this has heightened the emotional bond and engagement between users and the brands.

The most successful campaign launched by the company was The Social Suite, in September, whereby users were asked to share their wishes online. Cristina Mulet Amer, social media strategy and loyalty marketing manager, said: “The objective of the campaign was to share everyone's dreams taking into account that everything is possible.

“Seven winners – one for each brand – were chosen from the more than 23,000 wishes received from around the world. The wishes have been used as inspiration for the transformation of one of the suites at the ME Madrid Hotel, creating a 'mural of dreams' - a work of art by the Inocuo The Sign art studio and The Mushroom Company.”

Amer added: “The winners of the campaign received a free holiday in a hotel of their choice in each hotel brand: Gran Meliá, Meliá, ME, Innside, Paradisus, TRYP and Sol. The campaign helped the company raise the number of fans to make it the top Spanish hotel company on Facebook with more than 200,000 fans.”