Social Media Marketing:Hospitality

Virtually every sector is affected by the growth of digital platforms, and the shift to mobiledevice use. However, the hospitality and travel sector has been one of the most significantly impacted, due to major shifts in how people research, plan, and subsequently purchase their travel-related needs. The landscape is evolving, and as such, hospitality marketers need to understand those changing behaviors, and update their planning in step.

From a managerial perspective, marketers of hotel brands‘ pages first need to be aware of their members‘ characteristics and understand who their members are before developing strategies for successful social media pages. In addition, these benefits attract potential consumers to join the hotel brands‘pages. 

Hotel firms should provide communication devices with diverse formats (e.g., realtime synchronous or asynchronous communication technologies such as chat or bulletin boards, virtual product presentations) that enable members to exchange information about hotel properties/services, provide critiques of ambiance, and share service experiences.

Information gathering through brand pages is the most influential element to attract potential consumers to join hotel brands‘ online pages and to encourage current members to frequently visit the page. Valuable information for the firm can be collected from the communication among consumers. By analyzing the information, hotels may gain new insights into consumer trends, needs, and experiences that affect (dis)satisfaction.

Hotel firms should consider data-mining software to monitor the content of information posted by their members. This would enable marketers to analyze the success of current marketing activities and create opportunities to refine strategies, which in turn enhance business performance. Through monitoring, marketers may provide ongoing updates to brand-related information in order to satisfy the current needs of its members. Satisfying members’ information needs is important, because efficient and convenient information gathering is a primary purpose of hotel brands‘ page members.

Hotels should enhance opportunities that help members identify like-minded consumers who are seeking similar hotel services (e.g., in-room hotel technologies such as touch screen tablets or Wi-Fi). It is the nature of an online community that individuals gather based on similar interests and purposes. On a hotel brand‘s page, individuals may form a variety of sub-groups based on similar or specific needs for hotel services. Marketers need to identify these potential sub-groups and provide more specialized and personalized services to each group.

In addition to categorizing sub-groups, marketers need to incorporate a variety of tools in order to facilitate the hedonic nature of their brand pages. For example, hotels may use a gaming platform (e.g., simple poll, online flash, online puzzles) for notifications of new services. Adding videos related to new brand information and virtual tour devices gives members enjoyable experiences during their visit to the hotel brands‘ pages. New technologies including RFID (Radio-frequency identification) can be employed to allow members to carry out community activities (e.g., photos taken at a hotel are automatically posted on its brand Facebook page and tagged on members‘ own pages) without the presence of a computer or smart-phone during their stay. 

With these features, hotel brands can enhance member engagement by increasing the hedonic experiences of being a member of the hotel brands‘ pages and directly influence the positive impression of brands. Therefore, it is critical that marketers implement various features that enable members to enjoy all of the content on the brands‘ pages

Interactions and communication among consumers do not appear to help hotel brands develop consumer commitment. Marketers may need to devise methods that depend on business-to-consumer activities rather than facilitating interaction among consumers in order to build consumer commitment towards the brand. For example, direct communication via online chat features between consumer service and consumers when making reservations may be an effective approach to build consumer commitment. Through this process, hotel staff could directly identify consumer preferences (e.g., the type of pillow or room they prefer) and special requests (e.g., particular room temperature and particular newspaper they want to be delivered). Based on the information collected through this chat feature, hotels may provide personalized service that underlines the value of staying at the hotel brand. This may enhance consumer commitment toward a hotel brand and produce loyal customers.

Social media is an innovative tool by which hotel brands can take a proactive approach to manage brand relationships with their consumers. Hotel marketers can identify the most important attributes of their brands (e.g., rooms, front desk, breakfast, room rates, and cleanliness) by analyzing the consumers’ posts on the brand pages. Following this analysis, marketers can take immediate actions based on both complimentary reviews and complaints about service. Particularly for uncomplimentary reviews, marketers can mitigate their potential harmful effects by effectively responding to consumers’ comments. All of these efforts can assist hotel brands in creating favorable brand images and building strong relationships with their members.