BEST PRACTICE: Your hotel's social media strategy

Developing a social media presence has become compulsory for all hotels, but whose desk does the task land on and what happens when it all goes wrong?

Consultants and hoteliers say the secret to social media success is good planning by the PR professional, inspired by the team ocial media has gone from being the latest buzz word to an essential tool for hotels, used for communicating with guests and colleagues alike, but an air of uncertainty prevails regarding who should be managing it, when and how to manage it, why it is worth managing and what to do during a social storm.

The who
Edition Hospitality digital marketing consultant Paul Parsons has assisted hotels throughout the region. He is typically approached by confused hotel marketing managers who are under pressure to summon a social media presence.

“The impression I usually get, to be honest, is that social media has been dropped on their desk and they’re trying to reduce the amount of time spent on finding content, replying to posts and so on,” he says.

On a positive note, at least the task has been dropped on the right desk. As Parsons explains, only the marketing and public relations departments should be passionate about posting.

“Some people think that traditional laws of marketing and public relations do not apply anymore, but that is wrong. You still have to be able to write proper copy and be able to communicate in an understandable way,” agrees Iconsulthotels consultancy founder Martin Kubler.

You might as well drop social media on its head when your over-passionate and not-too-PR-savvy team members get involved.

Kubler cites the example of the Milanese chef of the new Giannino restaurant at Meydan Beach Club in Dubai, who vented his anger at unimpressed diner and food blogger Samantha Wood using a rather unpalatable choice of language.

Following her blog post complaining of a limited wine list and questioning the authenticity of the Milanese cuisine served at the restaurant, he told her to “contain the orgasm of your ignorance”, before going on to rant about the “ignorance” of all food writers, and finishing with: “All the above is directed also to all ‘professors’ [who] without having a clue of what they are talking about [keep] writing, twitting, Facebooking [sic]. Guys get a life!”

The whole unsavoury episode, which made international headlines, posed a PR nightmare for the restaurant, and quite the opposite for foodiva.net.
This is not to say your passionate team members should be banished from the realms of social media.

While the PR machine is responsible for publishing appropriately-worded, pleasant posts, ideas for content and resources should come “from as far up as the CEO down to the front-of-house executive — all should be involved”, says Parsons.

However, there is one party that should be exiled, the third party. Social media should certainly not be outsourced, even the consultant agrees.

“The problem with a lot of hotels is they will usually outsource it, which is the biggest issue. I advise them that they need to do it in-house, solely because of response times, and they know their brand better than anybody else,” says Parsons.

QUICK CASE STUDY 1: 

The Hotel: Le Méridien Dubai

The Leader: Madiha Zakir, online marketing manager

Objective
Social Media is not a fad anymore and it needs to be taken seriously by all hotels. It has changed the way people communicate these days and is very important in terms of online branding and reputation management. Conversations about our hotel brand are happening online whether we like it or not. As a brand, we need to listen and engage with our customers to sustain our loyalty and stay in tune with their requirements.

Strategy
We started the improvement of our social media platforms in February 2011. The process required dedication, taking us approximately two months to streamline our presence on Tripadvisor, Facebook, You Tube, Foursquare and Twitter.
I had to identify the USPs of our hotel, what works best for one brand does not necessarily work for the other.
Le Méridien Dubai’s social channels were primarily positioned as:
• Customer support: From providing special rates for rooms to restaurant bookings or dining experience feedback, our Facebook and Twitter profiles provide real-time customer support to our guests.
• Focus on fewer fans, more engagement: More engagement with fewer, more loyal fans or customers always drives better results.
• Drive incremental revenue: Exclusive ‘fan-only’ offers launched for Le Méridien Dubai’s Facebook fans.

Results
By improving Le Méridien Dubai’s social media presence, we have seen an enhanced perception of our brand in the local and international markets, improved guest loyalty and a substantial return on time invested for our rooms and restaurants.

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The when and how
So now you know which department is responsible for social media — PR and marketing — the next question is, how long should they be spending on it?
If you’re finding yourself spending all day browsing Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, you should probably get out more. According to our experts, it is not necessary, nor healthy.

You should sit yourself down with a cup of tea and dedicate around one hour every day to managing the hotel’s social media platforms, plus some extra time on the side to do the all-important yet all-to-often-neglected planning.

“Usually the biggest issue is there’s no planning,” says Parsons. “I still don’t understand why any department of the hotel doesn’t have social media content prepared in advance.

When it comes to anything else, it’s planned months in advance. But with social media it seems to be a last-minute ditch. It should be planned in line with other marketing campaigns.

“The amount of time spent on social media can be reduced if hoteliers start planning. Spend 30 minutes in the morning reviewing what’s been said, what content needs to be distributed and then again in the afternoon.”

This method is not the only method, however. It depends how far you want to take social media. Le Méridien Dubai online marketing manager Madiha Zakir, who Parsons describes as one of the most active hoteliers on social media in the region, says she does not have fixed timings to manage the platforms.

“Le Méridien Dubai accounts are always open on my desktop and smart phone throughout the day. I do however spend more time on Le Méridien Dubai’s Twitter profile assisting our guests with any query or responding to their feedback regarding their stay or dining experience,” she says.

Similarly, Starwood Hotels & Resorts senior manager – digital field marketing for the Middle East Jitendra Jain says it is difficult to put an exact time spend on social media.

“Our guests are active on social media throughout the day and night; at all hours, so we want to interact with them as much as possible. With the resources we have in place, we are able to continue an ongoing dialogue with our guests across our social media platforms,” he says.

Being a large international hotel operator, Starwood benefits from having a digital marketing team, in-house hotel social media champions and often uses social media consultants.

But monitoring social media can be made easier with cheap, some even free, tools such as Hootsuite.com, a social media dashboard allowing hotels to monitor, respond and manage their social media accounts from a single website.

The platform enables companies to utilise the built-in link shortening and tracking tools, as well as providing the ability to be able to pre-schedule posts at a time of convenience. Furthermore, its inbuilt reporting functionality provides a great way for hotels to be able to see what is working for them across their different social media accounts.

Or, try Social Mention, a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user-generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information.

The site allows you to easily track and measure what people are saying about you, your hotel, even your neighbour’s hotel, a new product, or any topic across the web’s social media landscape in real-time.

If you do not like what they are saying, skip to the ‘When things go wrong’ part of this article.

To effectively plan — and pre-schedule posts, on your newly-downloaded Hootsuite account — you first need to learn how to engineer a social media hit. Think ‘viral’. Or at least try to post something interesting.

“Everything is social. Social Media can be used as a marketing, customer service or distribution channel. It is part of our everyday life now and the key to a hotel’s success is unique content. You have to ask yourself, ‘what sets you apart from your competitors?’ ‘What are your fans more interested in… rooms or F&B content?’

Parsons breaks down social media content into three core categories, so you’ve got informational, conversational and incentivise types of content.

“So if you’re posting informational content, you might want to tell people if you have recently won an award, expose them to what is happening at your hotel,” he says.

“Then you’ve got conversational when people give you feedback. So chef may be creating a new menu and they can’t decide between tomato soup and mushroom soup so you ask your fans what they would like to see on your menu.”

And finally there are the incentive posts, or bribes, aimed at luring guests to your hotel with a special offer or a competition, for example.

Do not forget to link back to your website, Parsons — like your fans — gets angry when he sees hotel incentive posts minus a web address or even contact details, and he becomes even more infuriated when your staff are apparently clueless that such an offer exists when you telephone the hotel to book it.

“Too many hotels, when they’re promoting offers, they’re not linking to their website so how are they going to monitor return on investment for room bookings. It’s crazy,” complains Parsons.

“And when it comes to dining, put a phone number and in preparation make sure the people that answer the phone know in advance what offer has been on social media”.

QUICK CASE STUDY 2: 

The Hotel: Sheraton Dubai Mall of the Emirates, UAE

The Leader: Jitendra Jain, senior manager, digital field marketing Middle East, Starwood Hotels & Resorts

Objective
Sheraton is our largest brand and most popular brand in the world. It was important for us to build our own platform to resonate with the Sheraton brand and also operate as per our social media guidelines.

Strategy
At Starwood we have our own social media guidelines and best practices, which we used to activate the platforms for Sheraton Dubai Mall of the Emirates.
It’s been a complete team effort, between Starwood’s digital marketing team, the hotels in-house social media champion and a social media consultant, to develop a social media presence for the hotel.

The Sheraton Dubai Mall of the Emirates hotel is a new hotel for us, so it is important to first build awareness of the hotel across all major social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter.

We are reaching out to our Sheraton customers, our loyal SPG members, global travellers and residents of the GCC, to introduce the hotel, its signature Sheraton experiences and other offerings.

All associates are aware of the changes at the hotel, which include the new social media platforms, in addition to other communication tools.

Results
Since the launch of the Sheraton Dubai Mall of the Emirates social media platforms, we have significantly increased awareness of the hotel and its features. Our focus in the coming months will be to continue building that awareness and to highlight our upcoming offers and services.

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When things go wrong
In an ideal world, your hotel could do no wrong in the eyes of your loyal Facebook fans, Twitter followers, and the rest of your social media following.

Unfortunately, there is a lot that can go wrong in a hotel, on the worse end of the scale are incidents from thieving staff and guest injuries to an outbreak of food poisoning or a terrorist scare, for example.

As a hotel, it is important to know about such incidents, communicate with those involved and resolve outstanding issues.

If you hear of negative experiences via a guest complaint on a social media platform, the whole world is listening. If you fail to adequately resolve the complaint, the whole world makes a mental note to avoid your hotel.

If the complaint involves a potentially legal matter, such as claims against the hotel in cases of theft or injury, Kubler advises the hotel to consult a lawyer to approve a statement to be posted.

“It’s nearly always possible to post a public statement,” he says, adding that hotels should not try to prevent people from commenting on the situation.
“It’s better to keep the doors of communication open. If you have 10 people booking into your hotel and they’re all complaining, you don’t lock the doors”.

“However, there may be extreme circumstances where yes, the wall may have to be turned off, because some information at the time cannot be made public. Again, it’s all about communication, so you post the statement,” Kubler says.

“In Ireland a hotel had an outbreak of a vomiting virus and had to close during investigations into the cause, there’s nothing the hotel could do about it.

It turned off its Facebook wall for a couple of days while awaiting confirmation whether the hotel was at fault or not. When it transpired that the hotel wasn’t at fault, it posted a statement with the evidence.”

Parsons says replying to every single negative post during such an incident only fuels the fire.

“The storm will die down, but often what happens in the case of a very bad incident is the hotel tries to engage with everyone who has commented on it. A lot of the time you’ve got people that want to join in the discussion for the sake of it”.

For smaller matters, Kreata Global Digital Media Services business director Sujith Mathew says take the negative sentiment and convert it into a positive.

“Social media is a platform to acknowledge it, address it and correct it – converting a negative sentiment to a positive sentiment. There are two ways of doing this. Often you can block explicit words, the second, and most important step, is just to face it.

“Call the concerned person or send a private message and take hold of the situation. About 90% of people will be happy because you communicated with them,” says Mathew.

Furthermore, it is important not to forget that feedback received from social media is a big asset to hotels.

“We appreciate the feedback that our guests provide us with. In today’s technology-driven world, travellers expect a dialogue with their favourite brands, where social media plays a key role,” says Starwood’s Jain.

“Travellers today know what they want and when they want it, and they expect personalised attention and experiences.

“Our social media platforms are linked back to our website where we give our guests the opportunity to review their experiences directly through ratings and reviews,” he adds.

Once the problem is resolved, communications should also be posted online, where the original complaint was posted, according to Kubler.

The why
When all appropriate preparation and planning has been done, you’ve published the day’s insightful posts, converted negative sentiments to positive and finished your afternoon cup of tea and half hour or so of monitoring, you may stop and think ‘what is the point’.

Even if you only started developing your hotel’s social medial presence because every other hotel was on Facebook, or the job rather rudely landed on your desk, done properly you’ll soon be glad you did.

While our experts say direct return on investment, in terms of direct bookings, can be difficult to monitor, they say the exposure for your hotel’s brand, and the added channel for engagement with your guests and colleagues is priceless.

“Social Media is not a fad anymore and it needs to be taken seriously by all hotels. It is no longer a question of whether hotels should use social media or not, but how effectively these channels are being utilised to improve the brand recognition —loyalty is paramount,” concludes Le Méridien Dubai’s Zakir.

QUICK CASE STUDY 3

The Hotel: Dubai Marriott Hotels

The Leader: Aftab Sayed, senior e-commerce manager

Objective
To improve the social media presence of the Dubai hotels, in accordance with Marriott’s social media guidelines

Strategy
We have the e-commerce team going to various trainings on social media via Marriott channels and then cascade this information down to all the relevant departments. All our social media activities are managed in-house.

Every time we have an update, all the relevant hotel teams are given trainings on the updates to be aware of new implementations and policies.

We also have a dedicated system set up to monitor and track negative and positive posts; we use a tool to see what the sentiment is for each segment.
It allows us to get all the information in one place and for us to reach out and see how we can better guest experiences.

This is all managed centrally via the Dubai cluster and cascaded down to each property involving champions from each department at a property level.

Results
We started out with a basic Facebook page for all our properties in accordance with our Marriott social media guidelines.

We started engaging our following more in 2012 and have seen remarkable results in terms of reach. We do not engage in Twitter for all our hotels, mostly just for the JW Marriott Marquis Hotel Dubai. We are going to focus on Facebook, Foursquare and Pinterest for 2013.