The new Topguest loyalty program

According to the following article, Topguest announced a major new product update that will allow their users to earn hotel points and other travel perks just for taking and sharing photos via Instagram, the new mobile photo sharing application. TopGuest was already changing the way hotels can recognize and reward loyalty, and this expansion beyond checking in with Gowalla or Foursquare seems to be a logical next step.

Recognizing how brand loyalty is expressed by the consumer is a big opportunity for hotels. We see consumers today leaving useful online digital trails about their travel activities, and savvy hotels are looking for ways to identify and encourage this.

Social Media ROI

1. What is meant by 'Social Media is not free'?

. Everything you put into a social media programm has a cost attached to it.

. You need to spend time by joining the conversation and interacting with your community.

. You should hire someone with specific knowledge to develop your Social Media plan.

. Even if the cost of investment is not that high, the financial impact can become huge after taking many actions on Social Media such as creating a Facebook page, a Twitter account and definitely enlarge tthe community by attracting fans and followers.

 

2. In addition to rooms bookings, what measurements would be effective for hotels?

. By the number of engaged and active followers.

. By the way they share your information.

. By knowing your reputation, your image.

 

3. How should a hotel, with limited resources, decide what SM efforts to make?

. Establish the goals you want to achieve.

. Which target you want to reach.

. The type of communication you will use.

. Depend also on your competitive set.

. The budget they want to spend in their Social Media campaign

 

4. What role does SM play in offering customer services?

. By interacting with your community, you can ask questions, opinions and advices about the current facilities and services offer by your hotel. So customer services can definitely improve.

. Be different from your competitors by posting interesting contents.

. Create engagement and satisfaction.

4 innovative ways to use web video for small business like hotels

Even if we are used to see a lot of videos on Internet, and most of the time bad ones, we will see how small businesses like small hotels can take advantage of web video without blowing their budgets and being original just like this article below.

1. Request User Submissions

Hotels should encourage their clients to send videos of them using hotels' facilities, or videos of them enjoying their holidays in hotels' structures. They could organize a contest where the best video could be used as an advertisement on the hotel website or to represent the hotel brand for example. It’s a good way of invloving your clients and building a community.

2. Replace Content

Try making a video instead of writing out your business updates. It is easier for people to watch a video tahn read a full article. Just like Loic LeMeur told in his videos Build Your Own Brand you can reach your clients and community more easily and more originaly ba sharing videos. Hotels could spread there newsletters by videos posted on their Social Media or sent by email to their community.

3. Teach Them and They Will Come

Product demos are fun, but it results difficult for an hotel to make a demo of it structure. However instead of having photos of rooms, gardens, swimmingpools, etc... hotels could have webcams around to show directly to people what is going on the hotel (weather, number of people, etc...) or even more by making short videos where customers could see themselves directly in the aera where they want to be just like jewellery fitting.

4. Make Some Face Time

Hotels can get even more personal, create a business Skype or Gmail address to let customers know they can call  the guest relations service for example if they have any questions about the hotel or it services. This kind of unusual service will build a strong relationship between the hotel and customers.

Hotels should try to think about innovative ways to provide their services and videos are a very easy, cheap and original way to create a buzz.

Social Influence Marketing analyse

Open publication - Free publishing - More influence

A possible future for travel deals on Social Media sites

We are talking here about the daily deals websites like Groupon and LivingSocial, which sprinkle hotel, spa and tour discounts in their daily e-mails to subscribers. Then there are the new travel-specific daily-deals sites, including SniqueAway and TripAlertz thanks to which you may never have to pay full price if you can plan things.

Those social media sites are changing the travel-bargain landscape, and giants such as Expedia and Travelzoo have to be part of the game. Hotels, flights, restaurants, tourist attractions and packages are available at a discount.
This seems to be the beginning with more personalized deals based on a traveler's itinerary likely coming soon.

Unfortunately this new kind of travel-bargain hunting is not for everyone. The deals have to be bought on the spot or within several days and are usually non-refundable, a tough sell for all but last-minute travelers and those who already have a vacation in mind.

The deals are not tailored enough to broadly change the way travel is booked. But one day people will receive personalized offers from online travel agencies, local-deals providers, social-media sites and others that team up to send deals to travelers based on their booked itineraries.

People who check in at an airport on Facebook or FourSquare, for example, coule receive an offer for the airport bar if they are headed for a vacation or a Starbucks special if they have an early flight home. That's the type of thing I get really excited about.

How can a hotel use Klout scores to improve customer communications?

The Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. The scores range from 1 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence.
Hotels found a way to use Klout scores to identify influencers talking about their establishment in order to offer them special treatments.

The example of the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas which is currently developing The Klout Klub, which will “allow high-ranking influencers to experience Palms’ impressive set of amenities in hopes that these influencers will want to communicate their positive experience to their followers.” I still have a doubt on this!!! In fact I am not sure that followers' influencers will be enthusiastic in the way they know they will not have the same treatments as their influencers.

I do agree that hotels should invite influencers to let them know what they are talking about.
As an hotelier, I would use Klout scores to identify my influencers, and then I would give them special information about my structure they can only communicate through there Social Media. It could be for example a free weekend for the opening of a new hotel, or spa, or restaurant.

Moreover once I have indentified my influencers, I can create on my website a "community link", where customers could intercat directly on my influencers' blog, Twitter or Facebook account.
We could also use localised engines like Fousquare or Google Places to show our customer the number of check-in our hotel had per week for example, to show our popularity!

Those are a few ideas but with the quick evolution of Social Media and influencers hotels will have to be more and more reactive if they want to keep improve their customer communications.

What are the most important Facebook marketing metrics?

The most famous metrics on Facebook are propably Fans and "likes" which measure what we can call your followers.
According to the following article there is some Facebook metrics you might not measure.

I think the most important metric is engagement, and "the more engaging content you publish, the more engaging your Facebook page will be." But as logical as it seems, one problem is that marketers do not know fans engagement with their brand because they don't follow and metric this kind of metrics.

You can consider you have a good average engagement rate above 0.1%, and even better, a great engagement rate between 0.3 or 0.5%.  As the article says "the best way to measure engagement is monitor the number of interactions per post, and ideally divide it by the number of fans, that way you get a number that is comparable across multiple Facebook pages with different fan numbers."

Of course there is one thing missing in this article like they don't deals with the fact you can't measure the satisfaction of followers about their online activty. Because as we know brands have the possiblity to "buy" a ceratin number of fake followers you have to be careful with those metrics. Maybe that a good way to improve followers' sentiment would be the addition of a "dislike" button to better understand there real feelings and engagement about our brand.

A funny analysis of Seth Godin's Blog!!!

Seth godin blog

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What will delight today's customers who are mobile lifestyle travellers? Why not a virtual dressing in your hotel?

D di h, think tank 2011, cmh oneglobe

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