The Online Social Networking Phenomenon: The Good stuff or Bad Medicine for the Hotel Industry?

by Gianluca Giglio

The Internet is a major part of our life, and we use it in almost every aspect of our daily routine. As of the end of 2009, nearly 1.8 billion Internet users were recorded worldwide; in Asia alone there has been an increase of 568 percent in the first decade of the 21^st century.  The majority of Internet users are in Asia (764 million), in Europe (425 million), and in North America and South America (446 million).

It seems that mostly all of us log on to at least one online social networking profile: Facebook, twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, flickr, tripadvisor, trivago, just to mention a few the most popular social sites.  But we could also make note of some of the more private online communities like the “invitation only” site aSmallWorld.

Why should a Hospitality Professional care?

We care because most of our customers are online, and these social networking platforms are the primary source for researching travel information.  They are giving consumers the ability to choose and book hotels directly online more than ever.

Why Else You Should Care? : Online Community Credibility

Community boosts value and credibility online!

Do you remember when you used to take a vacation and then, once home, telling all your friends about the great and not-so-great experiences you had?  How many friends would stand around you and listen- 10, maybe 20 or 50?  Nowadays, we do the same thing but with one major difference.  We share our experiences with thousands of friends, family members, and even relative strangers.  We update our comments; add our media, photos, video and sound bytes to make it available to anyone interested.  And, we do it while we are still on vacation, miles and miles from home.

Let’s add some relevant figures to this point:

• Social Network users are three times more likely to trust their peers’ opinions vs. advertising when making a purchase decision.
• More than 60 percent of travellers prefer sites with recommendations from peers.
• More than 35 percent of travellers have changed their hotel bookings based on what they read around the social platforms.

I believe that planning a vacation and choosing a hotel room are parts of a process, based on perceptions, expectations and belief.  Planning a vacation is akin to looking for a needle in a haystack.  We can hardly get a feel for the reality of our purchasing decisions until we physically show up and stand in the hotel lobby, swim in the pool, and lay on the bed.  The social networking platforms serve only to help us to empower our message, to let a perspective guest receive a better understanding of our service, ambiance, design, and to offer them the confidentiality to book it.

We have to learn to glean from these online communities the general voice of our customers, their insights, their needs and desires, and their ideas.  From there we can utilize these networking sites to generate, evaluate, and refine the perception of our product based on other consumers’ perspective.

Listening

We can develop a system of online communication through networking sites to pick up on users’ opinions continuously.  Given what we learn, we should use this information to make existing marketing strategies and campaigns more effective.

A while ago I uploaded some photos of our cooking class on Hotel Raito’s Facebook page (a member of the Ragosta Hotels Collection). This cooking class was a complimentary amenity offered exclusively to our hotel guests. Some community members voiced great excitement to participate in the cooking class and having the opportunity to  join our senior kitchen staff.

Because of the reaction and increased interest among users online, we were able to create a new program, targeted toward the wedding market, in which we invites guests to come and learn the “secrets to a happy marriage-” food.  This program is now open to any bride-to-be that has chosen our establishment for the wedding reception.  This time around we found enough demand for the program that we could fairly charge customers for the add-on experience.  The program became so popular and took off so quickly that we had to schedule more sessions then we ever thought we might need. By this winter, we are expecting that it will double in size- all due to online social networking.  The program generated enough interest in the hotel as a venue for weddings that we had a great increase of general reservations and bookings as well.  Again, our community asked for something specific, and we LISTENED very carefully to what they had to say.  Based on our reaction to our customers’ thoughts we have built a better product.

Embracing

More powerful and more challenging than listening- embracing means actually building new product and marketing ideas based on member input.

Last year, when we opened our small boutique hotel “Relais Paradiso” on Amalfi Coast, we were really open to the notion of creating a different approach to the market by introducing something new to the area.  We decided to open a discussion on an “invitation-only” social network platform.  Our community gave us all the answers to succeed.  Even the up-scale segment was very keen on booking a hotel with an “all-inclusive package,“ especially in a region where nobody was using  this kind of tool.  We embraced the input and created “The Key to Paradiso All Inclusive Package.”  At this moment it is the best selling package for the property.  But we don’t simply stop there.  We are keeping a constantly open ear to our community to better define the concept and make it more productive.

Interact

Good consumer interaction in this sense means reviewing internet sites to get immediate feedback from clients while “networking” with them and measuring performance in real time.

Don’t be afraid of bad reviews around the web.  Remember that each guest’s experience is unique to that guest.  You must learn to respect the criticism and use it as a great tool to measure your performance.  The most important thing is to interact with an upset guest.  Do not leave the review without making a comment visible to the community.  The availability of online reviews is a treasure for hoteliers, first because we have the possibility to explain ourselves and apologize for any inconvenience that occurred during the stay.  Second, we can go over the review with our staff to bring light to some of the problem areas or highlight a job well done.  I sometimes hear the negative opinions of other hospitality professionals regarding sites like tripadvisor.  This is a short-sighted response, though.  We have to embrace both the positive and negative feedback in order to improve the quality of the service we provide as every aspect of the world is becoming more integrated.

Actually, this is already happening in the online community.  Take, for example, tripadvisor and Facebook.  They have already formed a direct connection between them.  This means that you can reach and interact with a platform of millions of users on two different networks in one click.

This is the future.  Social Networking is real and is here to stay, and online communities drive commercial behavior.  If word of mouth is our best advertiser, then the growing role of an ever-expanding voice through social networking is a priceless gift.

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