Social Media and the Hotel Industry

          A hotel's goal has always been to get customers into their sheets. Fortunately, social media has been a relatable tool that's being used to organically achieve this goal. Social media gives you the opportunity to form a one-on-one relationship with your current and potential customers.

          Social media has been the leading force in marketing various products and services because it provides up-to-date information that a consumer can use to make instantaneous buying decisions via their desktop computers, laptops, iPads, e-notebooks and smart phones.

          People are tweeting and posting throughout the day and the faster you can slide exciting news about your hotel in between those posts and tweets, the better. On Facebook alone, there are 750 million active users and over 50 percent of them log in everyday and host at least 130 friends on their page. Twitter has 100 million active users and around 50 percent of those log in daily.  These stats show that social media seems to be the third arm of most people, so with the right social media marketing approach your sheets will be filled in no time.

          Some prominent hotels have found clever ways to leverage social media to keep it more “social” and less of a sales pitch. For example, the MGM Grand started a “Confessions Campaign” on Twitter where they asked their followers to tweet their sins which stimulated a livestream of people tweeting their sins. Other people could re-tweet which sins were forgivable or unforgivable. After cruising through the sins, the sin that was judged to be the best won a free night at the MGM Grand. Rewarding your customers for “liking” or “following” you is always a plus.

          Social media optimizing is a key way to reaching potential customers outside of the SM bubble. Search engines are attracted to social media pages connected to businesses. Good keyword usage in your social media business profiles can also establish you as an expert in the hotel industry because you will come up higher in the search results.

          When hotels find a comfy home in social media, they relate more to the increasingly digital savvy customers they are wanting to fill their sheets.

by Bianca M. Bailey at  B Culture Media