Revealing The Importance Of Hotel Communities Before It’s too Late
One of the key aspect to understand today for Hotels is that modern customers now make their decisions within virtual communities they identify themselves with.
A virtual community is a Social Network of individuals who interact through specific Social Media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries to pursue mutual interests or goals. Some of the most pervasive virtual communities are online communities operating under various Social Networking channels.
Information, research, data, and decisions are all guided by their community involvement.
If we look at what direction the largest Social Network channel Facebook is heading towards we can get a glimpse of the impact communities will have for any business in the future.
Facebook has now for years been striving towards putting an algorithm and services in place that will influence users to do all their daily online activities without ever have to leave the Social Media Channel.
Will Facebook become the first all-in-one Social Media Network? It is for sure not the lack of effort that will stop Mark Zuckerberg & Co.
The Importance of a Hotel Community
As Malcolm Gladwell says in his book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference “The success of any kind of Social Epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of Social Gifts”. These people as described as Connectors, Mavens, and Sales People.
It is almost like the Bermuda Triangle people are attracted to the community due to believes that some underlying power will help them amplify their message.
The Hotel communities are eco-system that feed on our commonalities and connectivity. It is driven by its own unique culture.
The community reacts to memorable micro-moments that stick. Once the content sticks with the community it will share this in a context that generates various forms of call to actions depending on the context of the information.
We have seen examples of small acts of kindness have a huge post-impact. And we also have seen examples of messages that been related to the way that appeared very inappropriate in the defined micro-moment. For many brands, we saw this generate huge negative impacts.
This illustrates the importance of Hotel Communities. Building a Hotel Community is centered on basic foundational principles:
- Build a quality network. Strategically develop your Hotels Social Profiles with the focus on the right mix of the target market, customers, peers, and resources.
- Provide quality content. It is important to focus on all content as part of your strategic mix. Meet your customers need by providing excellent, relevant information.
- Be consistent. Develop a reputation for being the trusted go-to source for the Hotel Industry by showing up regularly.
- Be genuine, authentic, passionate, and caring. Demonstrate in actions how much you care about your community.
From the foundation, Hotels need to identify new ways to connect with the Influencers within their Community. The influencers will help them build the pillars that will take your Hotel to the next level. That is when the real ripple effects of your efforts will start to show.
Learn how to nurture your influencers and the Hotel Community. The advantages of a Hotel community are numerous, including enhanced loyalty, direct sales, and business intelligence and market research. Further, because the “content” in Social channels are typically created (or at least co-created) by the participating customers/fans themselves, the cost to operate a Hotel community can be quite reasonable compared to trying to pull the same brand levelers through more expensive and not so effective channels anymore.
One very important and crucial fact that we saw arrive with Millennials and Generation Y is that they will not come to you, they expect you to come to them. Your Hotel has to be in their community today for them to make a last-minute decision that tip in your favor. It can be a simple as they are in your city Tweeting “Need a room for the night near XYZ, anyone knows a good Hotel they can recommend?”. If your Hotel doesn’t have a Social Media profile on Twitter you more than likely experience a missed opportunity here.
Several Small or even Medium size Hotels / Motels can’t be on every Social Channel. So yes on occasions Hotel will experience some missed opportunities. That is why it is important to identify the Social Channel that best represent your Hotel Social Media Community.
Social communities are a cultural phenomenon that cultivates and aggregate content from sources that will add value to everyone involved. It is really important to understand that this has a new impact on your Hotels Reputation Management.
Guests will continue to review the Hotel experience, but the intentions behind the reviews will shift. We are already seeing that Google Search rewards Hotels with Local Reviews. And As Facebook pushes this feature and the accuracy of each review goes up, Google will start to index Facebook pages as one of the primary sources for reviews. That means the Hotels Facebook page will go up higher in Google searches.
But most importantly, you need to rethink your Hotels Social Media strategy. You need to make sure your team are on top of their game and treating everyone with respect. Because it’s not a matter of if someone will go out and leave a review after they leave your Hotel. Now it’s a matter of what they will say 24 hours after they left. Because Facebook is giving each person a voice, and a reminder to use their voice. Your communities’ collective voices will determine how many people come to your Hotel shortly.
So make sure to stay on top of your customer performance because the Hotel Communities will determine the true reputation of your Hotel.
SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT AND FACEBOOK ADVERTISING FOR HOTELS
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About the author
Are Morch is the founder and owner of Are Morch – Hotel Marketing Coach. Get more from Are on Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | Pinterest | Instagram| Podcast
