The growth of social networking has shifted hotel PR strategies, according to experts at a Hotelier Middle East roundtable.
However, Ayad warned that it was important to ensure that hotels engaged properly with Arabic media.
“They tell you that they always feel like second best because we do everything in English and we translate. If your target audience is guests of the GCC, why are you writing to me in English translated into Arabic?,” said Ayad.
The Monarch Dubai personal assistant to regional director UAE Gabriele Feile, also the hotel’s social media champion, said a solution would be to have someone at the hotel ‘tweeting’ in Arabic on Twitter.
“It’s much cheaper; it doesn’t cost you anything to go on Twitter, except the time of course. It’s authentic,” said Feile.
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Aloft Abu Dhabi online marketing manager Daniel Spikjer added that a mistake made by Middle Eastern hotels was to approach social media and PR differently from in Europe.
“A lot of people that come here from Europe and London tailor what they used to do there and I think that is actually a mistake. People here are not stupid, they are not living in the Stone Age, and if I speak with Arabic people, they encourage us to do the same as in Europe,” said Spikjer.
Going forward, the experts agreed that social media would continue to grow and that it would complement traditional methods
Ayad concluded: “I think it’s going to become part of the integrated marketing communication tools that we use. Imagine driving down a highway and not seeing any ads — it’s not going to happen, the world is about brands. But it will definitely make us less rigid. We will always be communicating above the line, below the line and this one is definitely through the line and talking normally”.
For a full report from the Hotelier Middle East social marketing roundtable, see the November issue of Hotelier Middle East out next week.
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