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Social Media Capture Personalized Hotel Experiences
publication date: Oct 9, 2012
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author/source: Are Morch, Guest Columnist @ HospitalityEducators.com
Social Media Capture Personalized Hotel ExperiencesI just recently attended Travel Distribution Summit North America 2012. This event was organized by my good friends at EyeforTravel. The three main aspects I focused on getting more info on was;
Social Media is part of the Mix – not The Mix! It was interesting to observe either it was a keynote presentation or a specific topic session they tended to swirl into Social Media. And still we experienced that some of the questions was related to “Is Social Media Important?”. Now if your Hotel still is asking this question then are facing some challenges. Customers of today are in the driver seat, so we have to look into what are the new wants and needs of Today. We can’t keep up asking yesterdays questions anymore. It all start with Serve Your Guest through new channels as part of the mix. Social Media is NOT The Equation, it is just part of the equation. You still have to deliver a unique Hotel Experience. Why Move Forward? In a previous article I also asked What is it that keep Hotel Decision Makers awake during the night? And I have identified that the answer is not Social Media. In most cases answers are related to measurable metrics like Occupancy and Revenue. So as the event was moving on, this was a question I found more intriguing and interesting to look into ‘Why Move Forward?’. The answers I got was very interesting and really gave some interesting aspects on where to put focus when you build your Hotels Social Media Strategy.
Personalized Hotel Experiences How can Hotels of Today create a Disney Moment for their customers? Hotels has to be bold and ask questions that allows them to open the Window Of Opportunity. And here I discovered an example of pure brilliance from Expedia. What Expedia did was to collaborate with 12 Mommy Bloggers. and launched a blog curated by these bloggers called Kids In The City. This example illustrate that you can think outside the box, and don’t necessary need to have a huge marketing budget to pull of a Disney Moment. Travelers today are getting very savvy, and often depend on valuable info shared through their network. And moms often has a strong influence when it comes to finding the ultimate experience for their children. Now I know that AAA ratings, Diamond ratings, Star Ratings, Reviews etc. add great value to Hotels. But what if your Hotel was Mommy Approved? If your Hotel could pull of a collaboration deal with Champion Advocates one of the many benefits from this is increased Direct Bookings.
Travelers today are getting very savvy, and often depend on valuable info shared through their network. And moms often has a strong influence when it comes to finding the ultimate experience for their children. Now I know that AAA ratings, Diamond ratings, Star Ratings, Reviews etc. add great value to Hotels
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