Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Flickr and more; social networking sites that so many people are devoting so much time to ‘developing’. Fine if you’re part of a hotel group and have the luxury of a marketing department but even then, how do you know those charged with managing these sites are devoting all their efforts to the task. Social networking is addictive and the temptation to manage one’s personal networking activities in company time frequently proves overwhelming. The number of man-hours lost to companies as a consequence can be very substantial.
Small independent hotels don’t have the resources to devote to this activity. It takes time and there’s no real indication yet as to how effective it might be in generating bookings. I am managing twitter activity for a couple of hotels and have succeeded in generating a few bookings that I know about. However, the big opportunity is to increase the profile of a hotel and to tempt people onto the hotel’s website. It can be particularly beneficial locally. This is where the small independent hotel can score over its larger competitors…by being local, personal, distinctive and, if possible, unique in the ‘tweets’ posted.
The success of twitter very much depends on how many followers you can generate who are the sort of followers you want to reach. Alas, there’s a great deal of rubbish out there and many followers will never by guests. I weed out those who are undesirable!
So, how effective is social networking in achieving your marketing and sales goals as a small independent hotel? Well I can see the big boys blitzing twitter with promotions but I believe that being selective and focused on the messages you post can be effective. It’s also important to observe the twitter activities of others and to react to them whenever you feel there’s an opportunity.
There doesn’t seem to be any proof anywhere that social networking activity actually produces bookings…and it takes up time. A hotel’s website is still the most important marketing resource and will continue to be so. A successful website with high Google ranking for a host of key phrases will generate as much as 80+% of your bookings and this should be reflected in your budgeting.
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