September 2009
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Hotels are tweeting - but is anyone listening, asks Sorrel Downer
Do hotel marketers have any business among the bloggers and tweeters of social networking sites?
Many have enthusiastically embraced the new medium. Marriott International, for example, has been tweeting a free night promotion at 300 hotels to its 10,000 followers, and also has a Twitter feed keeping the world updated on its green initiatives. But promotions and competitions are not always greeted enthusiastically. One leading hotel group recently announced the winner of its latest raffle on Twitter – from 13 entries.
So what’s the point of being there? Nuno Valinhas of Tiara Hotels says his brand has a presence on Facebook ‘to try to reach more and more potential clients. The social media networks enable us, with a cost of zero, to somehow influence and engage more people to get to know our brand’.
But he stresses that ‘Facebook isn’t the best tool to generate more reservations.’
It seems to be the hotel bookers who have the best grasp of social networking. Lastminute uses Twitter ‘to provide a new way for people to follow our news, deals and updates, rather than to push information’, and has 3,000+ followers. And the more niche Mr & Mrs Smith (with more than 1,000 followers) has a Twitter team which promises to ‘enthusiastically respond to individual queries, whether you’re looking for hotels in Brighton or Bangkok’.
(And remember if you want to follow bahighlife.com on Twitter... we're at twitter.com/British_airways)
