Lodging Interactive Blog

Social Media Is Not Free: Here's Why

"Twitter is free. Facebook is free. Foursquare is free. TweetDeck is (still) free. Google Alerts is free. So, social media is free, right? Wrong. Beyond even the obvious costs - designing and building a Foursquare application, or stepping up to a fee-based listening platform like Alterian, Collective Intellect, Cymfony, BuzzMetrics, or Lithium's Scout Labs, social media is far from free.

In fact, social media-based marketing costs real money. While it may not be millions of dollars for 30 seconds of air time, making sense of the social Web and really getting it right takes planning, creative insight, product management, and other internal resources, all of which have costs associated with them that you may not see at the outset."

Read more via www.clickz.com

Welcome to the future, where hotel operations and marketing are one

It is official; the walls on every hotel worldwide are now made of glass and are completely transparent; the outside world can now see into your hotel lobby and witness how real guest are treated in the real-world daily. For those who thought that TripAdvisor had revolutionized the hospitality industry, be assured that we have so far only seen just the beginning.

Read more via www.hotelmarketing.com

Making customer satisfaction pay in the hotel industry

"In recent years, reports in the business press have questioned the value of measuring customer satisfaction, suggesting that such research does not explain or predict financial performance. A new Cornell University research paper demonstrates now the contrary.

In this report, Cornell University demonstrates that customer satisfaction research, when designed and executed with the prerequisite psychometric and statistical rigor, does in fact yield actionable insights and show clear linkages to actual financial outcomes"

Read more via www.hotelmarketing.com

Americans Head to Travel Sites for Vacation Planning

Americans Click It to Book It

Travel site categories experienced a gain in activity in June as Americans entered the heat of travel season. More than 100 million Americans visited the category during the month, affecting the following travel sub-categories: Transactions, Hotels/Resorts, Ground/Cruise, and Airplanes.

Travel - Transactions sites ranked as the top gaining category for the month of June, growing 32 percent to 5.2 million visitors. Viator.com ranked #1 in the category with 1.1 million visitors, followed closely by TravelPN.com with 1.1 million. OneTime.com grew to 853 million unique visitors, while WWTE.com attracted 457 million visitors.

Hotels/Resorts sites also saw strong growth during the month with 36.6 million Americans turning to these sites for lodging options. Marriott ranked as the top property, growing 16 percent to 6.5 million visitors. Hilton Hotels attracted 6.0 million visitors (up 13 percent), followed by InterContinental Hotels Group with 5.1 million (up 14 percent), Wyndham Worldwide with 4.0 million (up 9 percent), and Disney Travel with 3.6 million (up 5 percent).

via www.prnewswire.com

CoMMingle Offers Free Social Media Marketing Audit

CoMMingle by Lodging Interactive, an award winning leading interactive and social media marketing agency servicing the hospitality industry, today announced it is offering a free social media marketing audit service to hotels.

To get your free social media marketing audit, visit www.CoMMingle.me

Podcast: CoMMingle Social Media Marketing For Hotels

Hot out of the studio, we're pleased to release our CoMMingle Social Media Marketing for Hotels podcast.  Twelve minutes you can listen to online or download into your iPod!

Lodging Interactive  makes sure your ears and eyes are tuned into the ever changing, ever important marketing component of "Social Media" and the impact it can have on your property.  Get Tips on how to measure the reach of your Social Media footprint.

Visit CoMMingle  and see how we can assist you in the jungle of Social Media vines most hoteliers get tangled in...It's all here on HotelCast 2.0! 

  

Your hotel's social media digital footprint is too important to be wandering aimlessly.

Social media can prove to be overwhelming to any business. Before you even start, here are some things that you will need to consider:

• Develop a social media marketing strategy for your hotel.
• Find competent personnel to create, develop and manage the multiple social media accounts for the best social impact.
• Find responsible personnel to engage interaction from your hotel on all the various social media sites.
• Develop tools to measure results.

With a recent report released last week by R2integrated, 65% of businesses surveyed did not see any measurable results using social media claiming it was because of the lack of valid metrics and data. What were the other 35% doing that made it successful?

They had a plan.

Of course having a plan without the personnel, time or resources to implement the plan or the tools to measure the results would render the whole effort useless.  The "free" sites, inexpensive intern and inexperience in what works in social media for hotels and what does not, can end up costing a  great deal with reputation, effort, time and effective results.

Define and develop your hotel's digital footprint on the right track, professionally, responsibility and effectively. Don't wander aimlessly. Your hotel's digital footprint is not something to be left to chance when it will linger on the web forever.

Plan your strategy, become part of the 35% of those who have made it a success. 

Until next time,

Rosella

CoMMingle Social Media Marketing Manager

Plan. Socialize. Engage. Measure. 

World Cup 2010 breaks records on Twitter but are the Tweets worth reading? Are your Hotel's Tweets worth reading?

Being a huge World Cup follower, I decided to do some research on the World Cup's impact on the web. According to Akamai's Net Usage Index, the game between USA vs Algeria on Wednesday saw a traffic spike to 11.2 million visitors per minute during the Landon Donovan goal in the 91st minute. It moved past the 2008 Presidential election!

Breaking it down further, on average Twitter normally sees about 750 tweets per second. During the World Cup Games, records were being broken to 3,000 tweets per second during the games goals.

That's a lot of Tweets. What had me curious was the quality of Tweets vs. the quanity of them.

So besides the typical "Gooooaaaalll" Tweets when a favorite team scored, what relevant information was actually being shared? I came across an article from Esquire which broke down the chatter on Twitter during the World Cup games, "10.6 percent meaningful conversation and 6 percent self-promotion, plus 8.4 percent spam, 30 percent babble, 42 percent re-tweets... and only 2.4 percent legitimate news".

So now I bet you're wondering why is she talking about the World Cup when she should be blogging about hotels using social media as a marketing tool.

Two reasons.

The first and most important reason:

You say your hotel already participates in social media and networking. But what exactly are you saying to give substance to your followers. Those statistics I mentioned from Esquire are extremely telling, on an exaggerated scale, but I believe make a very good point on the overall ratio of chatter.

If the intern you hired is only adding to the "30% babble" on Tweeter about your hotel, what is the value added to your hotel's business? How effectively is it meeting your social media marketing goals and objectives? Do you have a plan in place to achieve those goals?

It's time to have a strategy regarding your social media marketing plan. Tweeting babble can be fun, but effectively participating in the "10.4% of meaningful conversation" and "2.4% of legitimate news" is what will yield results for your hotel's business.

Now the second reason? I have World Cup frenzy - my favorite team got eliminated yesterday but Wednesday the USA advanced to the Round of 16!

Go USA!

Until next time,

Rosella

CoMMingle Social Media Marketing Manager

Plan. Socialize. Engage. Measure. 

Social Media Frenzy - Everybody's Doing It! Not good enough for your hotel's social media marketing - you need a strategy.

Businesses have doubled their presence on social media over the last year. But if your reason for social media participation is "Everybody's Doing It", you might want to take a moment before plunging your hotel head first into the social media ocean.

For any business today, having a social media presence is not enough. It is worse to have a presence that is laying dormant with no activity and no participation then it is to not have a presence at all.

Sure you can create a Facebook Page or Twitter account for your hotel's plunge into social media marketing. But then what? Think of it this way, just because you have wood, nails and a hammer doesn't mean you can build a deck on your house.

You need a professional plan. You need a strategy.

This frenzy of hotels creating a presence on social media without a clear strategic plan reminds me of those morning weekend shows on cable. You know the ones I'm referring to? Those home improvement programs that show you how to Do-It-Yourself.

My husband grimaces every time he sees me watching the newest episode of how to create an outdoor living space on a newly built deck. Usually about half way through the show, I'm sure I can build the beautiful deck they showed on television. Piece of cake, right? Not.

The excitement of watching the show and these 'experts' telling me how easy it is really doesn't translate in getting the job done well.

To build a beautiful deck I would need time to research, design and learn architecture, building codes, knowledge of tools, resources, etc. It's not much different than the numerous aspects of social media marketing. 

Those home improvement shows have you thinking everybody's doing it, so you can also! So now you've created a presence on social media, how do you create a strategic plan for that presence in order to bring results to your hotel's marketing plan?

Just like I did with my deck, you hire a professional.

Until next time,

Rosella

CoMMingle Social Media Marketing Manager

Plan. Socialize. Engage. Measure. 

A Whole Lot of Like: What Facebook's "Like" Button Can do For Hospitality Brands

PARSIPPANY, NJ , May 24, 2010 - In April, Facebook debuted their new-and-improved “Like” button, allowing users to more easily connect with brands, services, and products across the Web. The old Facebook “Like” function allowed users to connect only within their Facebook networks. For example, if someone posted any content, their network of friends could click a button if they enjoyed the content. The new “Like” button takes this group-excitement principle a step further by letting Facebook users click “Like” buttons on third-party websites. The user’s Facebook profile will then be connected with the company’s Facebook page. The third-party “Like” button isn’t a one-time connection; it’s an open channel—like adding a new friend—that allows the third-party to update the user’s News Feed with news, offers, links, or photos. For those in the hospitality industry, this means you can offer discounted rates, room photos, or special offers directly to people who are already interested in your services. This represents a truly specific and personal style of advertising with a correspondingly higher ROI.

via lodginginteractive.com