Making the most of Facebook and Twitter
The trend for social networking has enveloped the region’s hotels, with many on Facebook and Twitter and others actively responding to reviews elsewhere online. The UAE’s social marketing experts explain how to be proactive, not reactive, when it comes to such media.
Let’s start with TripAdvisor. Do online reviews damage hotel brands if they’re bad and how do you capitalise on those ones that are good?
Rob Singleton: It is an ideal social sphere because let’s face it, online is where everything is going, everything is getting digitalised, so what you’ve got is a progression from word of mouth and magazine / newspaper reports to the online page, which can be updated instantly. Anyone can access it, so it can be monitored by us as much as by everybody else.
I got in touch with TripAdvisor to make sure that all the information about the hotel factually was correct and they were using the right photos, but then we welcome any kind of reviews and we want to hear about personal experiences because it’s a lot more believable than me going on and putting up a press release.
Yvonne Luedeke: First of all, you make sure you have your presence there; this is the one you are always controlling. Then you get the reviews; the majority we receive are positive and you deal with the negative ones on an individual basis.
Sanaz Ghahremani: I personally check our TripAdvisor page on a daily basis. Whether the review is negative or positive, we always send a reply back that acknowledges what the guest has said.
One thing I find really interesting with TripAdvisor is that there are a couple of guests who have given names to our hotel — such as a ‘shopholic’s dream’ and ‘a stopover in luxury’, from someone who came by the metro.
That helps me to know how our guests differentiate the hotel from the market competition. I am thinking about using it in some of our marketing material.
Dima Ayad: The best thing about getting a negative review is to embrace them even though I don’t like to receive them. I embrace them because they are a wake-up call.
People only comment if something is amazing or if it is terribly bad, never anything in between. If something is normal you are never going to hear about it.
Do these reviews mean you now have a much better image of what your guests think about your property?
SG: It definitely helps because I don’t think there are many marketing or PR tools that can help you communicate so much with your guests than social media. It’s on a day-to-day basis, you can be on it for hours and you can see what they’re saying, so it’s really direct.
YL: It’s the only thing where you communicate directly with the customer. With the guest questionnaires you ask them to fill out after their stay, you know how hard it is to get guests to write something.
They are nowadays on their BlackBerrys in the restaurants and they type it in right away. When you get a bad comment, use it as constructive criticism; do not take it personally. We work in hospitality; the customer is king.
DA: The value of the term ‘customers come first’ now really applies. Whenever we develop campaigns or start anything, social networking or otherwise, it is completely different, because PR as we know it has gone, burned, done, finished. [The days of] sending a press release or a photo caption — it’s over. That era has officially changed and it’s made our job more tactful and less polished.
Daniel Spijker: This definitely signals the end of the professional reviewer; now the reviewer is actually the traveller themself.
There is a lot more to social marketing than reacting to reviews. How do you proactively approach social media?
DS: I had a good example a few days ago; I was setting up my profile on TripAdvisor and I found a forum where a woman was giving advice to people about hotels in Abu Dhabi. She was very enthusiastic about Aloft opening, so I contacted her and I’m going to show her the hotel.
DA: It comes down to the concept in this part of the world of giving. If you are generous you have got guests for keeps and the same thing applies on social networking; if they know every time they go to your page you are going to surprise them with something engaging, you’ve got them for keeps. This is an engaging conversation. You ruin it and it’s over.
It takes one second and they can remove themselves [from your page].
RS: We have lots of competitions coming up, especially with the Rugby Sevens which has Crowne Plaza DFC as the main sponsor.
You use what you’ve got going on with the hotel and if you make it interactive and involving, people will come to you as they see you as a human face rather than a brand face and they can speak to you.
And how do you convert your fans and followers to hotel guests?
RS: We have started converting the people that are following us now into customers. For example, I met up with a group that had organised a ‘Tweet’ invite to the Belgian Beer Café at Crowne Plaza — there were 18 people that had arranged to have mussels.
They Tweeted me and asked if I could help so I went to meet them. This is just one of the groups that we’ve had.
DS: Our opening campaign is on Facebook. I agree with you that if someone takes the time to be a fan you need to give them something back.
It’s not one way traffic and not about blasting with advertising. We’re going to launch a big campaign, I’m going to give away a lot of prizes, even a trip to our sister property in Beijing. And then on our Facebook page I’m launching two applications — one is an auction for rooms, parties etc.
This is something I have never seen hotels doing; we are going to have our own auction application.
RS: We’ve got something in store quite similar to that.
YL: We do the auctions; on our website you can name your price for luxury. You collect a huge database.
DS: We don’t really see it as a revenue tool, in the end we sell a room but if the room goes for AED 120 (US $120), then fine. It goes to the highest bidder. It’s more to engage people and give them a reason to come to your Facebook page.
Then we are going to turn all of our Facebook fans into real friends. We are going to give everyone a membership card that gives them 20% discount to the F&B outlets.
That’s the second application — they click one button and a little card is made out of their Facebook photo and name. When they come to the hotel, we give them the cards.
It’s a custom application. We are doing it from now until the end of May; we need to have the option to be able to stop it but the idea is to let it go forever. We’re going to do a professional version of it on LinkedIn too.
What are your Twitter tactics?
Gabriele Feile: If you have somebody who can Tweet in Arabic I think that would be great because there is a lot of Arabic speaking people on Twitter and this is just a short message — 140 characters — so this would be a great advantage for everybody to have someone Tweeting in Arabic.
It’s much cheaper — it doesn’t cost you anything to go on Twitter except the time of course. It’s authentic.
DA: I couldn’t agree more.
RS: We have a lot of Arabic followers on Twitter and Facebook. Social networking is starting to spread through the Arab world, probably from the bottom up, from the youth groups.
DS: For me, the problem with Twitter is that you are going to have to go against 10 million people at the same time, but no one is really listening. Exceptions are big competitions which definitely work.
DA: It is a challenge to work on Twitter. It is an investment of time — you need to do it for a year and then see the return because that is the only way you are able to see that level of engagement.
SG: You can link your Facebook to Twitter and this can help you out.
DS: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a really good reason to be on these things as well because if I go to Google and want to dominate the first page, Twitter can really help me to do that.
Who in the hotel should be in charge of its social media presence?
RS: At the moment we are talking about having somebody that I could train to carry it on, now we have got the Al Badia Golf Club and the third hotel, we are going to set up even more fan pages.
We have 11 fan pages on Facebook and four Twitter accounts and a blog for InterContinental as well as the official websites, so there’s a lot for one person to keep monitoring.
So it would be good to have some support, but I think it would have to be someone who could be coached by those who have been the pioneers in how to talk correctly to and how to interact with people; you have to learn that language.
DA: It’s a very hard division between the language our brochures dictate and the language we speak on that [social media] platform, it is balancing normal and easy going while definitely trying to bring in the ‘wow’ factor while talking normally.
SG: No offence to other departments handling it, but I think that if a public relations person is in charge of the social media it might be the best solution because the PR person is the brand ambassador. It’s good to have PR monitoring it.
DS: In Starwood, we have a few people in America who are not PR at all, they are basically trainees and they are full time on FlyerTalk; the account is called SPG Insider and he has 30,000 posts on FlyerTalk.
I think actually it needs to really be a person; if you think too much about your brand language that is where it is going wrong because it is too much about your marketing and PR message.
It could be the chef who is really funny for example; it needs to be a character, so that your audience would notice if someone else wrote something in his place.
GF: It has to be someone who enjoys it. I agree it has to be someone within your philosophy, but still the recommendation coming from experts in the field is give it to someone who really enjoys it.
GETTING TO KNOW YOU: HOTELIER’S EXPERT PANEL
Dima Ayad
Director of marketing and communications
Raffles Dubai
Dima Ayed has been in the hospitality marketing industry for more than eight years, having begun her career as accountant director for F&B title Grumpy Gourmet. She moved into hotels as a PR executive for Jumeirah Group, progressing through the ranks to F&B marketing manager for Madinat Jumeirah, Burj Al Arab and Jumeirah Beach Hotel. Having left the industry for a year to join Dubai Holding as marketing manager, Ayad returned to hotels when she joined Raffles Dubai in May.
Sanaz Ghahremani
Assistant marketing manager
Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates
Having joined Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates three years ago as marketing co-ordintor, Sanaz Ghahremani is now in charge of a team looking after marketing, PR, advertising, e-commerce and social media. She is a graduate of The Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management in Dubai.
Yvonne Luedeke
Director of communications and public relations
The Monarch Dubai
Yvonne Luedeke has always been involved in hospitality marketing, starting as an apprentice with IHG in Berlin after graduating from college and then taking on roles in Paris and the US. She then moved to Dubai to join Jumeirah Group, was part of the pre-opening team for Burj Al Arab and then took on the role of F&B marketing manager for the group for six years. Prior to joining The Monarch in 2007, Luedeke was marketing communications manager at Hilton Hotels and Resorts for a year and a half.
Daniel Spijker
Online marketing manager
Aloft Abu Dhabi
Referring to himself as “the new kid on the block”, Daniel Spijker moved to Abu Dhabi seven months ago for the pre-opening of Aloft Abu Dhabi, which opened on October 27.
He has two years experience with Starwood and specialised in marketing and online marketing during an 18-month placement in London, which followed a hospitality university course in Holland.
Gabriele Feile
Personal assistant to regional director UAE,
The Monarch Dubai
Boasting a varied career background, Gabriele Feile was originally a banker for Deutsche Bank before entering hotels in a corporate role for IHG in Germany for five years. She then joined a head hunter in the European fashion industry. Feile moved to Dubai to join The Monarch in 2007 having received a phone call from general manager Henning Fries who she had worked with previously. A passionate fan of social media, Feile heads up The Monarch’s social marketing efforts in partnership with Luedeke.
Rob Singleton
Online marketing executive
InterContinental Hotels Group properties in Dubai Festival City
Rob Singleton moved to Dubai from the UK two years ago, taking on the role of PR co-ordinator for the InterContinental Hotels Group properties in Dubai Festival City. He has since been promoted to online marketing executive, a new role created with the remit to primarily look after the hotels’ social marketing presence as well as ensuring websites are up to date.
Facebook: friend or foe?
“I would say friend personally, friend/foe professionally, so I’m still debating.”
Dima Ayad, Raffles Dubai
“I have to share what Dima says, personally I love it, whereas Twitter; not yet.
“Professionally I was a bit sceptical at the beginning, but now I am a big fan. However, I still have to learn more.”
Yvonne Luedeke, The Monarch Dubai
“I am a big fan of social marketing both personally and professionally, which is the reason why I am doing it in the hotel. I think it is the new way of communicating.
“It will take over a large part of the daily communication. Here we are still at the beginning so there is a lot to learn.”
Gabriele Feile, The Monarch Dubai
“I am a big fan of social media, I think I am a Gen Y kid, I like all the new technology and social marketing is definitely one of them. I use it in my job a lot.”
Daniel Spijker, Aloft Abu Dhabi
“The role was created for me because I’d already started getting involved with social networking and getting a presence online and then they saw the potential to develop it.I should spend half to the majority of my role pursuing this and see where it can take us.”
Rob Singleton, IHG properties in Dubai Festival City
“Friend or foe — I’m a big fan of Facebook personally and professionally. Twitter is still very new to me, so I created my own page a few months ago and I’m just learning how it works.”
Sanaz Ghahremani, Kempinski Mall of the Emirates
How many fans and followers do you have?
The Monarch Dubai had 820 followers on Twitter on the day of the roundtable (October 7). “It is good as we only started in April this year, so that is a good number for the city,” says Gabriele Feile.
At Raffles Dubai, “in a month and a half we are following 600 people and we have 400 people following us and the level of engagement is incredible,” says Dima Ayad, referring to Twitter.
InterContinental DFC has more than 5000 followers and Crowne Plaza 3500-plus on Twitter, reveals Rob Singleton. He attributes the growth to a major summer campaign involving multiple giveaways.