Best Practice: The Facebook Factor
How Westin Abu Dhabi ran a Facebook Offers campaign to more than double its fan base and generate revenue at the same time:
Every hotel wants to increase occupancy and revenues with a slick marketing campaign that is simple, cost-effective and results driven and social media is fast-becoming the marketer’s favoured tool in achieving this goal.
The Westin Abu Dhabi grasped the online opportunities early and become one of the first in the region to use a viral Facebook Offers campaign to more than double its fan base, achieving a 150% ROI.
Facebook Offers allows businesses to share discounts with their customers by posting an offer on their Facebook Page. When someone claims an offer, they will receive an email that they can show either at a physical location or redeem online to get the discount.
Rational and objective
The Facebook Offers campaign launched by The Westin Abu Dhabi had the following objectives:
- Boost fans, especially women
- Generate awareness within the local community
- Increase bookings to generate revenue
- Drive ROI while working within a limited budget
“Social media is incredibly important for us but it’s not all about creating tangible results,” says The Westin Abu Dhabi’s marketing manager, Jonathan Hallmark who launched the Facebook Offers promotion. “As a hotel we really used this campaign to activate and engage the local community, increasing revenue was a by-product of this.”
Hallmark explains: “The property has a huge residential area around it which, of course, was our target audience. Before we began the campaign, the hotel’s Facebook Page had a following of around 60% male and 40% female but we noticed that, generally speaking, the quality engagement came from the female audience.
Hence our aim was to increase this percentage and the female-to-male ratio on the site.The second element to this strategy was our aim of boosting the resort’s spa – the two very much went hand-in-hand”.
As this was an untested tool for the hotel, no revenue targets were formalised prior to the launch of the Facebook Offers campaign. “Breaking even was the original target,” Hallmark admits. “I don’t really think anyone knew what to expect from the promotion so it really was a case of testing the water bit-by-bit.”
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Concept and investment
To attract more Facebook fans and connect with a community of online and offline trendsetters, The Westin Abu Dhabi crafted an appealing, shareable Facebook Offer and spread the word with sponsored stories.
The marketing team’s first step was to enhance the hotel’s Facebook Page by adding information that fostered a sense of community and reflected the hotel’s reputation as a popular destination. This content was posted at regular intervals to keep the page ‘fresh’, while holiday messages were posted to raise brand awareness.
To attract the hotel’s target audience of female fans the marketing team developed an attention-grabbing Facebook Offer campaign that included deals such as ‘2 for 1 ladies’ lunches’, ‘pick-and-mix’ spa packages, pool passes and discounted spa treatments.
The campaign featured offers with 50% discounts – a significant perceived value that helped gain traction in a competitive market. Allowing people to share the offer by forwarding it on to their Facebook friends contributed to the campaign’s virality and boosted people’s engagement with the brand.
Investment in the scheme was minimal – Hallmark can spend as little as $200 to test the market with a Facebook Offer. For this campaign, the marketing team selected a sponsored stories promotion to effectively leverage the power of ‘word of mouth’.
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In Practice
“This campaign worked really well for the hotel but a Facebook Offer needs to be compelling and great value, we have run a bunch of these offers since and not all the campaigns have produced the same strong results,” says Hallmark. “Also the UAE is all about discounts; everybody has become accustomed to receiving discounts everywhere they go.
“Hence, you have to be realistic; if you are fighting against everyone else and put an offer out there for a room at AED 1000 ($272) it is never going to sell – you need to add value but it has to be good value as well.”
Looking at the overall audience for Facebook Offers, Hallmark noted that such promotions do not represent an opportunity to achieve the highest rate in yield. “It doesn’t attract that kind of customer,” he explains. “You have to be willing to put an offer out there and let
it explode.”
Hallmark admits that one problem with targeting a viral campaign is that T&Cs need to be precise. “The key is to keep it as simple as possible,” Hallmark says. “The offers that worked really well, are literally ‘buy one, get one free’ pull packs – very simple. People saw it, liked it, and claimed it!”
According to Hallmark, a discount package should not be too ‘high-value’ however. “You should ensure that people who are claiming the offer will come back and pay full price for a service next time round,” he elaborates.
Results to Date
The results of the Spa Facebook Offers campaign:
- 150% ROI with 8600 vouchers claimed and 474 redeemed
- 119% boost in fans with 84% acquired organically
- 51% of fans are now female
- Significant growth in fans in the target age demographic of 33 to 44-year olds.
Having tested the waters with the spa promotion, the hotel is now experimenting with a clutch of different offers. Going forward, it will look at how the rooms component of the business can be boosted online.
“It’s a much more difficult sell because you’re asking someone to spend in the region of US $136-163,” Hallmark adds. “In April we had reasonable success with close to 60 room nights booked in one offer. That’s a ROI of something like 30-to-1, which is brilliant.”
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Klaus Niefer
General Manager, The Westin Abu Dhabi
“Social media has been the backbone of our marketing efforts right from the pre-opening of the hotel in November 2011. It is a great way for us to connect and share news with the community around us, our guests all over the world, as well as our associates in the Starwood family worldwide,” says Niefer.
“We use all social media channels such as Twitter, Foursquare and YouTube. However, Facebook has been our most interactive channel due to the wide reach in all age groups, nationalities and professions and Starwood as a company is very much focused on the digital revolution we are witnessing now.”
Niefer says social media hubs help the hotel to understand a guest’s needs and the way in which they prefer to connect with the resort. As Westin is a brand associated with wellbeing, the resort has utilised Facebook to communicate the company’s brand values more effectively to UAE nationals.
“Westin is not as well known in our region so we continually post relevant updates to communicate directly with our customers to gather any feedback them have,” he elaborates.
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Deeksha Trivedi
Director of Sales & Marketing, The Westin Abu Dhabi
As the current DOSM at The Westin Abu Dhabi hotel, Trivedi is guiding the hotel’s future social media strategy.
“We initially wanted to use Facebook Offers as an awareness tool but people really like how convenient these offers are and, consequently, we have generated a lot of revenue through the promotions as well.
“Several hotel groups are using Facebook Offers since we tested this spa promotion and we now face a lot of competition in the market. Hence, we have starting looking at another option provided by Facebook, which is its Shopping Offer tool.
This works in the same way as a standard offer but instead of simply sending a promotion which customers then have to follow up with a call and booking, it takes them directly to the website to secure the booking. Essentially it is an enhancement to the Facebook Offers tool.
“In future campaigns the marketing team will be looking at Twitter more closely, particularly to promote events in the hotel after the summer season. Foursquare is also a good channel for us as it allows customers to check into our menu and receive offers directly."
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Martin Kubler
Hospitality social media consultant of iconsulthotels.com
“Currently, Facebook Offers seems to be mostly used by international chain properties, whereas they could potentially be very useful for small and medium-sized local operators, due to the inbuilt “virality” of the promotion [i.e. every time an offer is availed, a newsfeed post is generated],” Kubler says.
“Creating good, popular offers is not easy and it may take several attempts to get it right. As a result, offers should be seen more as advertising than a quick-fire way to ‘put bums on seats’ or fill beds,” he adds.
“In my experience, and as The Westin case study shows, Facebook Offers work best for ‘auxiliary’ revenue centres (departments such as spa, transportation, etc.) and F&B outlets,” Kubler continues.
Wherever possible, hotels are advised to get their customers to book online in advance and ‘seal the deal’ at an early stage. “This is, by and large, no issue as consumers are familiar with this kind of ‘trade off’”.
Finally, track the success of each offer campaign using Google Analytics or a similar tool. “Only through data can hoteliers decide how to improve future offers.”