Hotel Marketing Association Blog » Digital Marketing

A picture tells a thousand words…

Pam Carvell, Marketing Consultant — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 15:09:12 +0000

Photos have always been powerful marketing for hotels – but how can you ensure that only great photos get seen by people? The simple answer is you can’t! In the ‘good old days’ you chose what photos went into your brochure and promotional materials and journalists even requested photos from you to use in articles. However, with the explosion of social media anyone can publish photos and videos and anyone can access them. But there are some steps you can take to increase the chances of one of your photos being used. This is just one of the useful pieces of advice that came from the HMA meeting on 21^st June2011 at the InterContinental hotel, London. Speakers included Richard Medley of Spider PR, Journalist Tom Chesshyre and Richard Murray of the Dorchester Collection. Here are a few of the useful nuggets to come from the session…never say no to a request to do a review by a major paper…always have a press contact named on your website….follow travel journalists on Twitter so you know who and what they are writing about…issue press releases to social media at the same time you post them on your own website…set up an account on Panoramio and upload your pics there – that’s where Google Places gets them from…set up and regularly check your entry on Wikipedia…put your images on FlickR…set up your own Google Places account…take ‘ownership’ of your names on LinkedIn. Great presentations and thanks to Linda Moore for organising it. Fab venue – love the meeting rooms at the InterCon overlooking Hyde Park and what delicious mini-desserts….much better than canapés!

Just because it’s social doesn’t mean it’s casual

Pam Carvell, Marketing Consultant — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 11:00:04 +0000

Great quote from Emma Roffey of Cisco at the TFMA show. Social media makes most people over 40 think of their kids messing around on Youtube and Facebook. And to people under 20 it’s just fun, where anything goes and can be said and published. It’s easy to forget that anything posted online can acquire a life of its own and go global in hours. It can also come back to haunt you in 10 years time – apply for a job, get googled and hey the potential employers sees you do things they don’t really want their employees associated with – even if it was when you were a carefree student! So take social media seriously. It’s social, not casual!

Reputation Managers Wanted!

Pam Carvell, Marketing Consultant — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 11:23:43 +0000

A very strong message to come out of the National Hotel Marketing Conference in February 2011 was the need to monitor and manage what is being said about you and your business on-line. This begs the question of precisely who’s responsibility this is within a hotel or regional office. In a ‘non-digital’ world, customer comments were typically handled by the GM, media coverage and news releases by the PR manager and brand reputation by the head of marketing. And HR could get involved with customer comments regarding staff.

A hotel can not control what is said about it on-line, but if this is picked up immediately and then acted upon, a positive comment can become an amazing global word-of-mouth endorsement and a negative one can be dealt with by various means to prevent it damaging the business.

This begs the question of what skill-set is required to do this, and apart from using an agency that specialises in this field, it would be fair to say that the skills do not currently sit with a current hotel team. This situation is very similar to the situation with Revenue Management 15 years ago. Hotels tried to deny the need for this position, and typically expected Reservations or Front Office to become RM experts overnight. Finally it was accepted as a skill-set in its own right, and reflected the inevitable changing of the business. Most hotels now have at least a Revenue Manager if not a team. Hotels that failed to embrace this paid the price with below-market performance.

I believe we face a similar situation now with Reputation Managers. Hotels who are in denial about this could be losing business for years to come as a result of a blog post by a geek sitting in some shady outback – but who knows how to give life to a story.

The skill-set doesn’t currently exist, just as Revenue Managers didn’t 15 years ago, but there are young people who understand how to manage and manipulate the web to spread news and who can learn how to use this to your commercial advantage. The sooner hotels embrace the digital world in which we live and the impact of global word of mouth, the quicker they can ensure that in 10 years time potential guests are not reading a horror story about your hotel from 2011.

Technology for Marketing & Advertising Show

Pam Carvell, Marketing Consultant — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 09:51:49 +0000

The TFM&A show takes place at Earls Court 1-2 March. I have attended for the past couple of years and the free seminars are a brilliant way of keeping up-to-date with the latest advances in marketing, with great presenters and up-to-date stats on what’s happening.

Visit www.t-f-m.co.uk for more info.

Etap hotel chain seeks musical snorers!

Pam Carvell, Marketing Consultant — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:45:41 +0000

Etap have launched a social media campaign to find Britian’s best musical snorer, creating a micro-site where people can upload clips of snorers! Wow, who came up with this? I know hotels need to embrace social media, but this smacks of PR for the sake of PR to me!

Beware the hashtags ##

Pam Carvell, Marketing Consultant — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:28:35 +0000

You learn something new every day. It took us Brits years to work out what a hash key is #. Now it’s being used in front of the word ‘fail’ on social media sites to register criticism of a brand or product. Evidently it started on Twitter as disgruntled Apple users took to sharing their experiences with the descriptor ’#fail’ but is now becoming more widely used. Yet something else for us marketers to keep an eye on.

Where are you in the social-media charts?

Pam Carvell, Marketing Consultant — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 07:21:05 +0000

Recent research by Marketing magazine has shown that the fashion retailers are the best at social media marketing, if you look at the number of followers they have. Burberry are top with 1 million Facebook fans, 22,140 Twitter followers and 1682 YouTube subscribers. Top-shop has over 500,000 Facebook fans and Asos just over 250,000. Fans and followers don’t necessarily convert to purchasers, but recent research by Verdict shows that 50% of consumers read customer reviews when shopping online.

I quickly checked a few major hotel chains and found that Hilton have 47,000 Facebook fans, Best Western just over 20,000, Holiday Inn a measly 1,300, Premier Inn 1600 & Malmaison 1 person!!!! This suggests that hotel companies don’t have professional social media strategies. The hotel industry has never been at the cutting edge of marketing, but surely they have had plenty of time to wake up to the reality of social media and the relationship you can then have with your customers?

Promoted Tweets

Pam Carvell, Marketing Consultant — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 14:36:31 +0000

Advertising on Twitter is finally here, in the form of ‘promoted tweets’ which are displayed at the top of rankings when people enter a search term into Twitter – a bit like sponsored links on Google. I guess marketers are always looking for new places to place ads - the back of toilet doors at motorway service stations and the restraining bar on a ski chairlift are 2 media that someone obviously went to great lengths to negotiate! Will Facebook be next to include a search facility and then sponsored results? A promoted tweet is still limited to 140 characters, so advertisers will have to be very clever. And be very careful that anything they say isn’t then outweighed by negative comments from users. Yet another interesting new challenge for the marketer of today.

Social Media must be part of your marketing strategy

Pam Carvell, Marketing Consultant — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 10:03:39 +0000

Some new research from InSites Consulting has shown that social media now reaches 77% of the online population and sites such as Twitter and Facebook are used by 28.3 million people in the UK. I also heard recently that worldwide Facebook has 400m active users monthly, 100m of whom are accessing it via their mobiles. Any company can build a fan page FOC. Coca Cola have 300m fans worldwide!

Ignore social media at your peril, but don’t make the mistake that some big brands have of trying to dictate to cosumers through these channels. It’s about being helpful and honest and engaging with your fans.

The value of Twittering?

Pam Carvell, Marketing Consultant — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:54:23 +0000

It may appear as if all companies have now jumped on the Twitter bandwagon, but a recent study by Virgin Media Business has shown that only 16 of the FTSE 100 companies use it to engage with customers. People are saying that 2010 will be the year Twitter really takes off, especially as they are about to launch business accounts. I love the sound of TwitterHawk which helps businesses connect with people geographically and related to certain keywords. So if you are a restaurant and someone tweets looking for restaurants in your location, your response can automatically be sent to that person. Clever hey? But businesses still need to understand that Twitter is about engaging with people, not broadcasting messages.