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.
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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.
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