iberostar hotels & resorts social media use
DESCRIPTION
A presentation presented to Iberostar Hotels & Resorts about how to use social media to market its product in the U.S . for the first time.TRANSCRIPT
Social Media Marketing Analysis for the U.S. Marketfor
Iberostar Hotels & Resorts
Conducted by: Adriana Gallegos
Washington, DC
May 12, 2011
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Overall Goal: To brand and market Iberostar Hotels & Resorts in the North American market.
End Result: Someone mentions Iberostar he or she should say “the hotel/resort that made feel like a star.” Sales Result: Increase revenue by 3% in the U.S.
Social Media Objectives: 1. Drive traffic to Iberostar Web site & properties2. Engage consumer with relevant messaging to increase conversions3. Raise awareness among Americans from 19% to 30% in six months4. Create top-notch customer service5. All content should be about Iberostar not destinations
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U.S. Target Audience
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American Profile
Interested in learning about deals, discounts, new and current services. Most interested in having a relaxing time. Not looking to do any tourism around the city, the only goal is to lay on the beach with a tropical drink.
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How to Get Started in Social Media
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Use a four-step process for social media marketing:
Reviewing: See what the chatter is about your brand.
Responding: Use blogging and micro-blogging(Twitter) to answer questions or comment
on the chatter.
Recording: Generate content that’s informative and helpful to social media users.
Redirecting: Direct web traffic back to your website.
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Research(Analytics)-2 to 3 months*Use a service like Review Pro or Revinate
Plus your Comp Set
Your Hotel ListenAcross all travel, social, and
industry media.
LearnDeep Analytics and Reports.
Ratings, Frequencies, Keywords, Live and Saved Searches, By Source,
By Property Comparisons, Historical Trending,
Competitive BenchmarkingDaily & Weekly Summaries.
ActConfigurable Alerts.Email, Print, Export.Manage Workflows.
Manage User Access.Multi-Property ManagementBest Practices for Hotels:
- Sales - Marketing
- OperationsImprove Your Business.
Take Control.
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Trip Advisor
Need to use a service like Revinate or Review Pro that will analyze the online market by looking at your competition and the top influencers.
Either Revinate or Review Pro will read all reviews on sites like Trip Advisor and choose which reviews one should reply to.
Time is valuable so use it wisely. You should spend most of your time engaging with customers while either Review Pro or Revinate do all the research.
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The “Before Starting in Social Media” Checklist
• Need to have the contact list of all guest relations, concierge and directors of each hotel.
• Community Managers must introduce themselves to the hotel staff and provide them with all their contact information.
• Do three months of research/analytics to better understand the online environment so that you know how to address certain issues.
• Need to have all FAQs and protocol procedures in place for how to respond to complaints, vouchers, and other issues.
• All employees need to know about your social media plan and strategy, and need to be ready to help out in answering certain questions.
• Have weekly meetings with the hotel staff of certain hotels to learn about the new services, events, food, and employees. This type of communication must be ongoing.
• Create the “Welcome Application”-a mini-Web site on Facebook.
• Before launching make sure you have the messaging, welcome application, protocol handbook, FAQs, and contact lists completed. The first impression is the most important.
• Hotels' social media strategies should focus on what social media are best at: identifying and rectifying customers' problems. If you use Twitter and Facebook to connect with your customers, get their feedback, and actually take action to fix their problems, they'll be much happier, and they'll tell they're friends about how you helped them.
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Examples of Facebook Pages
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Create a Welcome Application
This is an example of an application that could be created, add links to Twitter and our blog. Instead of the picture a video could be added.
Allow the customer to make reservations on Facebook. Hotels need to make sure that their booking engines can be found wherever the customer is, rather than asking the customer to search them out.
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Facebook Pages/Country/Language
Top U.S. companies focus on localization and language is secondary.
On Facebook there’s no need to explain why you added “USA” the title speaks for itself. You can either create country pages like Captain Morgan or regional pages like Nissan.
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Recommendation for Country Pages
Hybrid structures are an efficient way to get people to pages. If you’re thinking of using local pages, I’d recommend a
hybrid structure instead — where you use a global page (the current Spain page Iberostar Hotels & Resorts, keep it all in
Spanish) as a hub to attract users and have broad global information(corporate and reputation news) and then direct users to
regional pages-North America, Europe, Asia, or Latin America where they can get localized information in their local language.
Regional pages are more focused on the audience and market. For example, the North America page would target the
American and Canadian traveler. The Europe page would target the European in English.
After six months of managing the “Spain” main hub, “North America”, and “Europe” pages we would have to create a strategy
on how to include all the other hotels on social media.
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Both languages Arab and English because it’s a region instead of one country.
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Examples of Facebook Hotel Pages
Westin is a part of Starwood Hotel & Resorts Worldwide. Each hotel, such as this one in Germany, has created its own Facebook page. On this page everything is written in German because it’s location is in Germany.
Hilton Hotel & Resorts is the main hub Facebook page, but under its “likes” you can see all its other hotel Facebook pagesaround the world.
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Social Media Content
Pictures posted on Facebook tend to receive a lot of attention. However, not any picture gets the same amount of interest. With hotels, personal pictures are more meaningful to fans like “behind the scene pictures” of the chefs cooking or the “Star Staff” playing with the kids or dancing.
Don’t post too much-quality is better than quantity.
Create a personal connection with the user: ask them what they would like to see on the Spring food menu or other personal questions about the hotel.
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Social Media Response TimeThank or answer someone in realtime to create that one-on-one dialogue. Don’t make them wait more than a day.
Give a point of contact on Facebook and Twitter like “contact Rosa at Guest Relations at email and phone number”.
If someone mentions that he or she will be coming to your hotel notify the “Reception Director” about it so that when that person checks in he or she will receive a more personal welcome. Transmit what happens online offline as well.
Increasing the Fanbase on Social Media
Add the “Facebook Like box” and the other social media icons to your Web site.
All employees should include the social media icons on their business cards and email signatures.
Create a contest to create instant buzz.
Display posters or point of purchases of your social media presence in the hotel lobbies.
Create targeted Facebook ads.
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Social Media Measurement
It’s not about quantity but about quality. Likes and comments matter less than your ability to convert fans into sales.
Count all the positive comments and feedback and that will give you a better understanding if you’ve increased sales.
“Facebook impressions” and “retweets” are important as your message is getting out to a larger audience.
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Web site
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Web site
Before starting in social media your Web site must have the following:
1. All content must be current and translated into different languages.
2. All social media icons must be present on the site pertaining to their language.
3. The Web site is highly important because most content shared on social media will come from there.
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U.S. Holidays• May 7, 2011 (saturday): Kentucky Derby horse race
• May 8, 2011: Mother's Day [2nd sunday in May]
• May 21, 2011: Armed Forces Day [3rd saturday in May]
• May 30, 2011 (monday): Memorial Day (observed)
• June 14 [every year](on tuesday in 2011): Flag Day
• June 13-19, 2011: U.S. Open Golf Championship tournament
• June 19, 2011: Father's Day [3rd sunday in June]
• July 4 [July 4th every year](on monday in 2011): Independence Day USA
• July 24, 2011: Parents' Day [4th Sunday in July]
• TBA July 2011: National Dance Day. [info] [info 2]
• August 20, 2011 (saturday): Woodward Dream Cruise - car cruise in Metro Detroit. details
• September 5, 2011 (monday): Labor Day
• September 11 [every year](sunday in 2011): Patriot Day (a.k.a. 9/11 or September 11th) - observance to remember those who were injured or died during the terrorist plane attacks in 2001 on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, other targets.
• September 11, 2010 (sunday): Grandparents' Day [first sunday after Labor Day]
• September 16 [every year](friday in 2011): Stepfamily Day [info 1] [info 2]
• September 16, 2011 (friday): Constitution Day & Citizenship Day Observed
• September 17 [every year](saturday in 2011): Constitution Day & Citizenship Day. If it falls on a saturday or sunday, it is observed on the work day closest to the 17th.
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Top U.S. Travel Media
• LA Times Travel
• NY Times Travel
• AOL Travel
• Huffington Post Travel
• Gadling Blog
• Chicago Sun Times Travel
• USA Today Travel
• MSNBC Travel
• CNN Travel
• Caribbean Travel + Life Magazine
• Travel and Leisure Magazine
• Martha Stewart Magazine
• Family Travel Network
Most of the stories posted on the North America accounts should come from the top media listed below.
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Conclusions:
• Need to create a new Facebook page and Twitter account for North America.
• Ideally, it would be best to get started in social media once the Web site is completed. So far there has been a few complaints on Facebook about the site.
• What makes you different from your competition is: your international by having hotels all over the world, star treatment, and passion (have more posts about Antonio Banderas).
• Position yourself as the leader of international tourism. You’re diverse and full of passion.
• Need to know the North American market: travel media, holidays, events, culture, and food.
• It’s important for the Community Mangers to build a relationship with the hotel staff in order to be informed about specials events or news.
• Remember all social media tools you utilize Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, and a blog should communicate your brand.
• Just because everyone else is on social doesn’t mean you have to rush into it, take your time to make sure all the pieces fit before posting content that doesn’t make sense.
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Contact
/adrig7
/adrigallegos
/adrianag7
/adrianagallegos99
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