Hotel Blogs - Let's talk about hotels

Got a bad review, so what?

In this world, we're living a time where it is impossible to control the message and quite possibly the messenger.

With the Internet of today, everyone can give his opinion of anything at anytime.

The most common platforms that people can use or abuse are the ones that are easy to access and shared by friends and family.

Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, TripAdvisor, YouTube, Qype, FourSquare, Google Place are among the most popular sites and applications where you can give your latest impression of a book you read, or rant about a restaurant you've been to recently or complain about a poor service you had with your bank or simply praise the London Underground staff that helped you to go A to Z without searching the complex Tube map.

Yes, reviews and opinions can be sometimes daunting and hit you straight to your heart , especially if you own your business or if you're passionate by what you provide.

Unfortunately (or fortunately for us consumers), reviews and opinions online are here to stay whether you like or not.

So what should I do with this bad stinky review of my product? Nothing.

Apart of responding to the consumer opinion through the platform, there is nothing to be done. Unless you think there is some genuine improvement to be made to your product, service delivery, there is absolutely nothing you can do about people giving their own opinion and share this with the world.

As Seth Godin writes in his book Tribes "One bad review doesn't ruin my day because I realize what a badge of honor it is to get a bit of criticism at all...The lesson here is this: if I had written a boring book, there's d be no criticism."

So the thing you should concentrate on is to have an exciting product or service that people can relate to emotionally and fee the envy to share with others.

If you think you do things right, there is nothing to worry about this old bad review.

Good discussions on LinkedIN

I have lost count about how many times I have advised hotels to embrace LinkedIN as the most important business related social networking tool.

If you're still not convinced, have a look at these conversations:

#1 Which promotions/packages are you interested to book with hotels (31 answers)

#2 Do you know a booking engine that can help hotels to shift bookings from OTAs to its own website (34 answers)

#3 Do you believe guest satisfaction is directly linked to internal employee satisfaction (56 comments)

I have joined different groups (that I am struggling to follow because of so much good content out there) and would definitely urge you to have a look at them:

* The Hospitality Group

* Hotel Industry Professionals Worldwide

* Revenue Management

* Luxury Hoteliers

* and our group as well (little promo here!) Hotel Blogs

I will list some more groups and conversations next week.

Integration of Social Media on your hotel website with Sorat Hotels

I have recently come across an interesting integration of most social media sites embedded into the main homepage of the German hotel chain Sorat Hotels.

 

This hotel chain has really maximized their homepage to show their audience how many different social media channels they can be found on.

On the right side side, they have integrated the Facebook Like banner and shows about 500 people who like Sorat. Then you have button that take you to their YouTube video account and Xing (business networking site).

See also how they publish their Twitter account with the pink button "Follow us"

On the bottom on the page, Sorat also promotes their presence on social media sites:

Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare, Friendticker (never heard of that one), Qype (the recommendation site).

And they even added the bookmarking button from Google and Yahoo.

I am surprised not to see any mention of leading hotel review sites though.

Do you think it makes sense to promote all these sites? Have you done similar things on your hotel website. Let us know.

Show on your Twitter account that you care (or at least try)

We've talked and promoted on these pages different Twitter accounts created by hotel chains. And Four Seasons is of no exception with a slick & nice designed Twitter account.

But have you noticed something?

Four Seasons follows almost only Four Seasons hotel Twitter accounts (see on the right side of the picture).

What do you think this translates into the mind of their followers?

In my opinion, it means I am not interested by you. I am not suggesting that you need to follow every single follower (I don't personally). But the fact these guys don't even pay attention to some followers or other Twitter accounts other than Four Seasons is probably called loneliness or laziness or dontcareless.

Thoughts?

How hoteliers & restaurants can start using Foursquare

This year, Social Media is all about localization and relevancy. Believe it or not, people are willing to share their whereabouts and happy to tell their friends and family where they are almost instantly thanks to applications available on smart phones like Android phones (I use a Nexus One myself for 2 weeks now), iPhone, Blackberry and others.

The concept is simple. Your mobile device can tell the world where you are located and you can "check in" in places you are right now. Usually people are willing to share interesting places like restaurants, bars, hotels, attractions but also less interesting places at first like airports or train stations. Eventually you might find that another friend of yours is also at Heathrow Terminal 5 so why not having a cup of coffee rather than being on your own waiting for the boarding gate.

Today, there are 2 clear players in the localization based online services: Gowalla and Foursquare. Both companies almost started around the same time. If you want to have some background about how these two companies were created and how their founders Josh Williams and Dennis Crowley found the idea, I would advise to read the story on the tech magazine Wired in here.

I have been experiencing myself Foursquare for more than 2 weeks since my acquisition of a Nexus One which runs on Android, the mobile phone operating system engineered by Google.

And I have to say I got used to the application very quickly and "checking in" seems natural to me now. But my wife keeps telling that I am a geek so maybe Foursquare is not for everyone for sure.

It doesn't mean that you - hoteliers, restaurant owners, bar owners - shouldn't pay attention to this new social networking site (remember how we didn't pay attention to Twitter before).

The reason: a phenomenal growth in the last 12 months that doesn't seem to slow down (2 million users this month). See stats from Compete.com below.

But also Foursquare (and probably Gowalla) brings greater proximity with your customers and has this megaphone effect which leads for the operator to offer these guys something special if they keep coming back to your property.

Also bear in mind that Foursquare is also a bit of game for users to keep checking in. You can collect badges and become a Mayor of a specific place if you checking in often in those places.

So while studying a bit more what Foursquare could really do to hotels, restaurants, I have discovered that Foursquare allows business owners to register themselves. This is how it works.

#1 Find your property

 

 

#2 Have a look at how many people checked in and what they say about your property (see the little note about blueberry muffin from Dj J.)

#3 Register your property on the right side that says "Do you manage this venue? Claim here"

You would need to register first on Foursquare.

First what are the benefits fort the hotel, restaurant, bar owners?

 

#4 Follow the steps to register your owner property and make sure you use a professional account and not your personal Foursquare account. Otherwise all your colleagues or your customers would know what you do on the weekends and so on.

So in no more than 15 minutes, I would believe you can create your account, register your property and start creating offers and all this for free.

Feel free to share your experience with Foursquare. I am looking forward to hearing your feedback and be patient as this company is still young and the audience is relatively small for now.

If your hotel are in places where Foursquare is used quite extensively like London, New York, San Francisco...give it a try now. Don't wait until your competitor does it.

Disclaimer: I don't work for Foursquare neither have shares in the company even though I am happy to receive some (Dennis, are you listening?)

What not to do to drive interest towards your business

I don't know how many times I have written and ranted about the emails I get to influence me to write or refer to some new businesses that are "super" exciting and all "unique" and so on...

Like this guy who writes to me:

---------------

Dear Sir

I am interested in a blog post for my site www.xyz.com

Regards

Tim

---------------

Where do you think this email is going to? What's wrong with that approach.

1/ Dear Sir...are you kidding me? Can't you just say my name instead of Dear Sir

2/ No introduction about who this guy is, neither the nature of this company

3/ He's interested but what's in it for me?

4/ Is this guy in Dreamland to think I am going to write about his company because he thinks it's interesting enough for my editorial line?

Please make sure you don't make these mistakes when trying to build relationships with other people or business entities.

How you could use Twitter to find potential customers

Most hotel industry examples out there have been exposed on past posts here and there, but I realize again today that very few hotels use Twitter as a way to find potential customers who could walk in their doors quicker than they can think of.

Hotels haven't really used Twitter for finding qualified leads.

Today I asked on my Twitter account:

"Let's see if Parisian hotels are listening. Where is the perfect hotel in Paris to hold meetings in the lobby or over a coffee?"

Guess how many hotels did respond to that question? Big zero. And some of you warned me afterwards that they would be surprised to see any answers.

When I was in Boston earlier last month, I tweeted "Arrived in Boston" and almost within 1 hour I had 2 or 3 hotels in Boston already sending me a greeting message and invitation to come to their hotel.

How did they guys found me?

Pretty easy.

You just have to use the SEARCH function on your Twitter application or use simply search.twitter.com and type some relevant key words that could end up in some interesting reaction with potential guests.

OK. So what do I need to search for? Key words like "hotel paris" would be a good start.

Now imagine that you're a hotel who knows the answer for Edward Westwick. Who do you think Edward would remember when he will back in Paris, pending he had some good advice for the pub :-)

What about this guy who says he's at the Pullman Hotel. You could have send him a tweet like "Welcome to Paris,, I hope you're enjoying your stay. Feel free to come by our hotel bar, we are only 5 min walk from the Pullman." Again, what do you think Welly_tj will think when he will receive this?

Using Twitter is dead simple. Use it for your own benefits and stop advertising your best deals that nobody cares to look at.

I am still waiting for answers for good hotels to hold meetings in the lobby with some nice coffee :-)

Have you hotel website re-designed (it's not optional)

How many times do you ask yourself this question: does my hotel website live up to my expectations and more importantly to my customers target expectations?

How can my hotel stands out from the crowd if I am in a competitive marketplace and if all things become equal on the web? Yes I know some big brands spend some crazy money on CPC in search engine but don't be fooled by sponsored links. People do also click on organic results. 

Last week one of the marketing guru complained that most hotel websites look the same.

If you are up for a dramatic change that make sense to your business, I would advise to talk to these guys at e-hotel services. They offer to revamp your website for less than £2,000 if you make an order before the 31st July. If you are interested, more information is available here.

As a special gesture, e-hotel services is offering Hotel Blogs readers a free banner worth £150 if you decide to have a make over with your website . Interested? Have a look here.

One of my favorite site that e-hotel serivces did make over is the The Elefant Hotel in Riga, Latvia. Clearly this website makes it easy to navigate. Find other works by the hospitality web consulting agency right here.

PS #1: I have found the website of the Apostrophe Hotel in Paris very unique and personalized. Not developped by e-hotel services though.Thoughts?

Should hotel brands pay bloggers to write about their latest campaign

I have recently received an email from a PR company who does work with an International hotel chain trying to bribe me into writing a blog post about their latest brand campaign.

Here's how the email goes. Names have been changed to fictitious names of course ( I am not that evil).

Hi,

My name is Jeremy . I work for a company called honeybee who helps advertisers connect with bloggers in order to create interesting, genuine campaigns. I am contacting you because we have a campaign for Dreamland Hotels that I thought your blog would be perfect for.

The campaign consists of helping Dreamland Hotels promote their competition (http://www.ibelieveicandream.com) by writing an article about the competition and posting it on your blog to announce it to your readers. Depending on some of your blog statistics, we would pay you 40 euros or more for the article. If you are interested in this campaign, please get back to me and I can explain it further! Also you can have a look at honeybee at what we do (http://www.ibelieveicandream.com)

Thank you for your time

Regards,

Jeremy

Community Manager UK/US | HoneyBee (who definitely lives in dreamland)

So here are some questions to you readers, fans, and hoteliers, should we go for it? Would you think of me and the content of this blog differently if you see that we start to publish paid posts.

What about if I make it obvious to you readers something that say  "Sponsored Post" (which is one of our advertising opportunities but never proved to be highly demanded by advertisers anyway).

Thanks in advance for your honest feedback.

Most hotel websites look the same, try to be different

One of best marketing gurus of the 21st century Seth Godin has written back in May a post on his famous blog that says most hotel websites look the same if you just delete the name of the hotel and replace it with another one. Ok. Maybe he does exaggerates a bit here, but I believe he's not very far from the truth.

Do you agree?

Do you think you have a hotel with a website that stands out from the crowd. How often do you ask yourself if your hotel website is living up to your expectations and your customers target.

The post from Seth is here.