The Revinate Blog: Best Practices

Best Practices in Hotel Crisis Management

In the immediate aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing a few weeks ago, the Boston police quickly instructed bystanders to leave the area and return to their homes and hotels until the imminent danger had subsided. As the race finish line was in the tourist-trafficked Copley Square, dozens of hotels were impacted by the event.
With attendees frantically rushing out of the area and desperately trying to contact loved ones, it was imperative for the hotels to engage in the real-time social media conversation, especially with cell communication cut off. Fortunately, many of the area’s hotels took to their respective Facebook and Twitter accounts swiftly and effectively to communicate with worried guests and assure their families and friends that all everyone was safe.

A few of the nearby hotels stood out during this crisis period with their real-time responses. The Fairmont Copley Plaza took to Facebook soon after the news of the disaster spread to assure followers that the hotel’s colleagues were safe. The hotel also responded to each and every tweet directed at the hotel. The Lenox Hotel was similarly quick to update its Facebook page with updates on when the hotel would be re-opened and answers to guest questions. Finally, the Mandarin Oriental, Boston posted updates on Facebook and Twitter assuring followers that everyone was safe, despite the evacuation.

The Importance of Crisis Management

What we can learn from each of these hotels is that, in the wake of an unexpected disaster, real-time, responsive communication is essential. These hotels were cognizant of followers’ concerns and swiftly allayed them with direct and transparent messaging. Each property addressed incoming questions received through each channel promptly and worked hard to broadcast the safety precautions they were taking. Finally, each hotel appropriately suspended any form of communication that was not relevant to the ongoing disaster and avoided any form of promotional or unrelated posts that may have been originally scheduled.

Contingency Planning for a Crisis Situation

While no one wants to think about disasters, it pays to be prepared and have a social media crisis plan in place. Clearly, each of these hotels was prepared, evidenced by the swift and effective communication. Here are some tips when crafting your hotel’s contingency plan for a crisis situation:

Create a social media crisis policy.In times of sudden crisis, having a social media policy in place can certainly fast track your response time and mitigate any negative impact to your hotel.. Consider who will respond to social media and who else has access to the accounts, in case the primary person is unable to respond. Are social media managers allowed to comment on the situation, or only the hotel’s response? In case people are injured, how much information can be shared? While scary to imagine, you must consider all possible scenarios and document your expectations.
Respond in real-time. Each of the hotels above took immediate action on social media soon after the bombings occurred. Each property deviated from its normal social media planning process and took to each social network to communicate updates in real-time. When doing this, be sure that your most senior social media communicators are involved to ensure that you maintain your brand voice and stay consistent with your messaging.
Keep only necessary stakeholders involved. When there are too many “cooks in the kitchen” when managing your social media presence, you lose brand consistency and face the potential of damaging your hotel’s reputation. To avoid this problem, make sure that you involve only the necessary stakeholders at your property. These individuals will usually be members of your marketing, communications or public relations team, as they will possess the best writing capabilities.
Follow-up with an official response. Once the main crisis period has subsided, have your PR team craft an official hotel response to the situation. This message should be shared across all social networks and can also be fed to media, guests and colleagues around the hotel.
Resume planned content strategy in time. The worst thing a hotel can do in a time of crisis is to continue sharing self-promotional messaging that has been scheduled in advance. Nothing leaves a worse impression than showing a flagrant disregard for a real-time crisis. After suspending this messaging, engage with fans in a responsive way until order is restored and business is back to usual. Only then should you resume your planned social media content strategy.

If you follow these five tips, your hotel will be well positioned to handle any crisis scenario. Situations like these come at unexpected times and almost always require real-time, responsive response over social media. Therefore, having a crisis plan in place is imperative and will empower your communication team to nimbly navigate the turbulent waters during the state of emergency.

A version of this story originally appeared in Lodging Magazine on April 30, 2013.

Posted by Greg in Best Practices, Hotel Examples, Social Media, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

How to Earn More Twitter Influence

As Twitter usage matures, marketers are appropriately moving their focus away from follower acquisition and towards maximizing the impact of their messaging on the platform. And the beauty is that by increasing engagement with your followers, you will acquire additional followers. Following are some quick best practices for Twitter engagement:

Growing Your Audience Through Optimized Tweets

Twitter experts often say that influence should be measured not by a user’s follower count, but by how often his/her tweets get retweeted. Retweets lead to increased exposure for your hotel or restaurant and are key to building an engaged following. We’ve written about the importance of retweets in a previous post about Twitter analytics but have yet to touch on what kind of messages to embrace (and avoid). Here are some tips to consider:

Avoid truncated automated tweets from Facebook. Nothing is more annoying to users than to see an automated, “bot-like” message flow through your newsfeed that is either too long to read in full or sends you to a Facebook page that requires you to log in to your account.

Stick to only a few hashtags. While hashtag use has become a pervasive phenomenon across all media channels, overusing them in your tweets will result in lower engagement. New York Times editor Daniel Victor says that hashtags fail to attract new audiences.
Nevertheless, a report from Twitter states that tweets with up to two hashtags receive nearly 50 percent more engagement.

Use appropriate punctuation and formatting. The biggest misperception about tweeting is that audiences do not care about style or formatting. Social media scientist, Dan Zarrella, reports that retweets consistently contain correct punctuation than non retweets. Moreover, it has been shown that the tweets most often retweeted follow proper formatting. That is, each tweet should begin with a capital letter, utilize proper grammar, and avoid any semblance of text message-like abbreviations.

Optimization Will Lead to More Followers

Once you consistently commit to the above practices, you will be prepared to grow your follower base. In addition, Twitter recommends that you share a heavy dose of visual media (e.g. photos and video), respond to mentions and feedback and participate in live, real-time Twitter conversations to extend your reach. Fusework Studios and Buddy Media report that real-time engagement will have a maximum reach during the following days and times:

Tweets sent on Saturdays and Sundays see a 17% higher engagement level compared to weekdays.
Wednesdays and Thursdays are the days with the lowest rate of engagement.
Tweets that are published between 8 AM – 7 PM in your time zone see a 30% increase in engagement throughout the week.

By following the above recommendations and taking advantage of a helpful social media dashboard, your brand will be headed toward higher Twitter engagement and audience reach.

Posted by Greg in Best Practices, Social Media, Twitter, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

Social Media Analytics Strategies and Tools

Much to the relief of social media managers, 2013 seems to be the year when more sophisticated social media analytic tools will become widely available. For years, we’ve been faced with a frustrating reality that social media activities were difficult to track, which made the task of setting key performance indicators (KPIs) an arduous task. While the development of new tools is encouraging for marketers, it is still challenging to determine which tools are best for measuring and reporting on your social media programs. We will address this topic in our upcoming free webinar on Tuesday, March 26th.

Social Media Analytics Strategies

In preparation for the webinar, I attended Eye For Travel’s Social Media & Mobile Strategies for Travel Conference. Many of our industry’s digital thought leaders came together for lively, information-rich sessions at the event, yet there was one session that really stood out. Barbara Pezzi, an analytics evangelist from Fairmont Raffles (FRHI), presented on the importance of tracking the right analytics for your social media activities.

During the session, she showed the audience how to properly set up social media tracking URLs in Google Analytics (GA), dug deep into the GA platform to show referral traffic, multi-channel funnels and campaign reports, and provided some very important ideas to keep in mind when measuring the effectiveness of your social media initiatives. Barbara urges us, when setting up our social media tracking, to remember the following:

Tie social media campaigns to business goals and then measure accordingly
Measure our social media results, not our activities (“We don’t get paid to gather Likes and followers; we get paid to convert business.”)
Focus on useful and actionable metrics; if your reporting does not provide valuable insights, revisit your metrics
Start with web analytics before investing in a proprietary solution; without a foundational analytics strategy in place, even the most sophisticated tool will be rendered useless
Accept that we will need multiple tools, as no single measurement platform will provide all the social media analytics needed

Social Media Analytics Tools

Barbara followed up these assertions with a list of useful social analytics tools that are worth trying out, in addition to the Google Analytics platform. (Please note that many of these tools charge a monthly subscription fee and will work most effectively when combined with Revinate’s social media platform.) Barbara’s list includes:

Multiple Social Networks:

Actionly – provides social media monitoring, social integration with Google Analytics and a workflow model for social media management
Consumer Barometer – provides insight into how consumers use online and offline information sources in their purchase process
Crowdbooster – provides real-time Twitter and Facebook analytics, allows users to customize the data range, shows which messages had the highest engagement and identify biggest social advocates
Simply Measured – provides easy Social Media Measurement and Analytics for data-driven agencies and social media managers; offers free reports on Facebook Pages, Twitter profiles, Google+ pages, Pinterest accounts, YouTube channels and Instagram posts
True Social Metrics – inspired by analytics guru Avinash Kaushik, it provides insights on his four “best social media metrics”: conversion rate, amplification rate, applause rate and economic value

Twitter:

Topsy – provides the ability to count searched for terms, topics and hashtags, discover the most influential Twitter users by any topic and measure the exposure of events and campaigns
Tweet Reach – provides analysis of tweets that match searched for terms as well as reports the exposure and reach data for those tweets

Google Plus:

All My Plus – provides social analytics data on your Google+ page profile as well as your page’s followers, circles and communities that you are a member of

Pinterest & Instagram:

Curalate – provides visual analytics of your brand’s images on Pinterest and Instagram at a pixel level to measure conversations around your brand’s visual content
Pin Alerts – provides the same functionality as Google Alerts, where the site notifies you whenever via email whenever a user has pinned content related to your brand or searches you have set up
Piqora – provides a suite of Pinterest analytics on pins, boards, clicks and pages that help brands engage, grow and measure their audience on Pinterest.

Each of the above tools provides useful insight into your social media activities across multiple social networks and can help report on your social KPIs. However, when considering which tools are right for you, remember this Albert Einstein quote that Barbara closed her session with: “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” By measuring the results and not the activities, you will be on your way to effectively reporting on your social media efforts.

Posted by Greg in Best Practices, Success Stories, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

Using a Social Approach to Acquire Direct Bookings

A few weeks ago, my colleague participated in an HSMAI event in Bangkok, Thailand. One of the general sessions focused on the increasing role of online travel agencies (OTAs) and questioned whether the hotels have lost revenue due to their own reliance on the channel. The message seemed to be that when used wisely, OTAs are a great vehicle for selling extra inventory. Nevertheless, many revenue managers continue to be too heavily dependent on the channel, providing inventory even during times of expected high occupancy.

This trend, of course, is nothing new to hoteliers. As we wrote last year, the commissions paid to OTAs are often viewed as just “the cost of doing business” and have been an industry norm for years. In our post, we discussed several ideas to consider when trying to convert more business on your site directly. From integrating social media on your hotel site to ensuring rate parity and offering consumers an added incentive, hotels can deploy a number of tactics in order to shift some of the bookings share away from the OTAs.

Fortunately, many hotels are beginning to action these ideas and are starting to regain some of the direct booking control they once enjoyed at the turn of the millenium. Nevertheless, the implementation process of these tactics does not come easy and other properties are continuing to struggle with it. My colleague was witness to these growing pains during a recent exchange with a New York City hotel. After extensive time spent researching her hotel options for an upcoming trip, she decided to book a property that was offering a rate $50 lower on an OTA site than on its own website. Preferring to book direct in order to earn loyalty points, and because we serve hotels, not OTAs, she called the hotel asking if they would match the rate that was available only on the OTA. To her dismay, the hotel denied her request; they would only offer the same rate if she booked the room via the OTA first and then filled out a in advance of her stay, which would offer her a credit.

The unfortunate, and highly ironic, moral of this story is that the hotel failed to treat a prospective guest, who is also loyalty member and brand ambassador, with the same well-considered approach that we talk about when managing your social media presence. The problem that some hotels continue to make it difficult to book direct is exacerbated by the fact that OTAs make it so easy to book and spend so much more money on advertising and technology. As they continue to capture bookings and grow their loyal customer bases, hotels remain laggers and are missing a crucial opportunity for acquiring more business. As we reported last year, J.D Power reports that customers who booked via an OTA such as Expedia were 45 points less satisfied than those who booked directly through a hotel’s site.

Accordingly, the lessons from this example go beyond learning from a botched revenue management practice. From an online reputation perspective, the ramifications of this aggrevating booking process have the same detrimental impact that a poorly managed check-in experience would. The experience sets the stage for a disappointing stay, ignores the importance of rewarding a loyal customer and contradicts the core principles of delivering exemplary customer service. We discussed these core principles when addressing how to find your social media value and are equally relevant in this instance. Whether your guest is preparing for their stay, checking-in at the front desk or engaging on your hotel's Facebook page, he/she wants the same things:

To be consulted about changes to your business, which makes them feel invested
To learn information about your local area, which makes them feel prepared
To experience personal contact with management, which makes them feel empowered
To feel like an insider, which makes them feel special
To have a valuable online experience, which makes them want to follow you

These are qualities that OTAs cannot deliver as effectively as your hotel's website, social media presence or reservations team. Once they become paramount priorities at your hotel, acquiring more direct bookings will follow. Building brand advocacy and deepening loyalty has never been easier to achieve through social media; by using the same approach when managaing the direct booking process, your property will reap the same benefits and garner higher revenues to boot.

Posted by Greg in Best Practices, Social Media, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

Webinar Recap: 5 Ways to Improve Online Reputation

Yesterday, we hosted a webinar that outlined five ways hotels can improve their online reputation. By measuring their reputation management efforts, involving the entire operations team, and tying compensation rewards to reputation achievements, hoteliers will see improvements in their overall guest satisfaction scores and, in turn, will receive higher review ratings. In case you missed this informative session, you can listen to the recording and view the presentation deck.

As our Cornell University co-host published in a recent study, proactive online reputation has a direct impact on your hotel's bottom line; their Center for Hospitality Research (CHR) report shows that a one-point increase in a hotel's average user rating on a 5-point scale makes potential customers 13.5% more likely to book that hotel. Moreover, hotels with great online reviews can charge more than those that do not rate as high. Finally, hotels that use social media for service and engage in the space to surprise and delight customers earn more positive guest sentiment scores.

As mentioned during the webinar, eCornell has, in partnership with Cornell's School of Hotel Administration, developed 14 professional certificate and 38 courses that provide the knowledge and analytical skills needed for efficient and effective management of worldwide hospitality investments. Among them is the new Hospitality Marketing & New Media Strategies for Revenue Growth. This course in new media marketing, called Marketing the Hospitality Brand through New Media: Social, Mobile & Search, is free to all of our session attendees.

Finally, we received a number of questions come in during the session via our live Twitter chat that we would like to answer in greater depth here:

How again can property management be awarded bonuses or compensation benefits for better online reputation?

By paying close attention to Revinate's guest satisfaction (Gs2) reports, hotels can leverage aggregated hotel review data to set goals for hotel staff to meet across all functional areas. Overall guest sentiment scores, for example, can make a valuable incentive for hotel general managers. Department heads could be awarded bonuses based upon departmental sentiment, while front desk managers could be given goals around response time or social media management. To learn how social media will change hospitality compensation plans, have a look at our blog post on the topic.

What are some ways that hotels can involve their entire hotel team when it comes to online reputation management?

A few ideas that we covered during the webinar included having your front desk employees engage with guests on social media to maintain responsiveness or offering spot bonuses to employees who are recognized by name in online reviews. To ensure that all employees see this feedback, one of our webinar attendees shared that her hotel posts all positive reviews in employee elevators, locker rooms and cafeteria. Ideas like these will guarantee staff involvement and engagement.

Is there any data available that is focused on the limited service or economy hotel sectors? A lot of the studies discussing the relationship between online reputation management and property performance seem to focus on the luxury segment.

While the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research study showed a direct relationship between revenue per available room and online reputation scores, the report did not include the economy segment. Nevertheless, the study showed that revenue grew by chain scale from the top down: A 1% boost in reputation led to a .49% increase in RevPAR at luxury hotels, .74% at upper upscale, .83% at upscale, 1.13% at upper midscale and 1.42% at midscale. Moreover, about 20% of our 15,000+ customer base fall into this limited service segment and firmly believe that online reputation is equally, if not more important, in the category.

Posted by Greg in Best Practices, Webinar, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

How Hotels Can Benefit From Vine

Last month, Twitter announced the launch of its new video-sharing mobile application, Vine. Currently available to iPhone and iPod Touch owners, Vine positions the platform as a way "to see and share life in motion." Like foursquare, Vine is a standalone application, accessible only through your mobile device. With a very minimalist design and user-friendly interface, the application is fairly simple to get acquainted with.

Getting Started

Before we get into how hotels (and their respective guests) are already sharing hotel-related content on Vine, let's have a brief orientation of the infant platform:

Creating an Account: To get started, simply sign up by entering an email address. If your hotel already has a designated email for social media initiatives, it would be a good idea to use it for Vine. Once you've created your account, you can simply sign in through your property's Twitter account, which you will be asked to synch up with Vine during the set-up process.
Acquiring a Following: In order to find and add followers on the platform, you can search by username, personal email import or, most helpfully, by importing your Twitter followers and see who has adopted Vine. Following users will allow you to view their most recently published content on your account's home page.
Creating Video: Content can be created by simply using your phone's camera and pressing the app's record button. You can start and stop recording to create a segmented video of many different shots, which is currently the most popular way of filming. However, videos are limited to six looping seconds in length, so keep this in mind when getting creative.
Sharing Video: At the moment, the only social channels users can share their videos are on Facebook and Twitter. Keep in mind that giving Vine permission to share via Facebook means your personal account - not your hotel's brand page - so you will only want to synch your property's Twitter account when setting up a business profile. Users do have the ability to tag their videos at locations via foursquare, but unfortunately cannot share them on the platform. Hopefully, Vine will soon permit users to share their videos on foursquare, which will make the process of finding relevant, brand-related content far easier.
Finding Content: Despite its simple interface, Vine is not, at this point, an easy platform to locate content. Similar to navigating a Twitter or Instagram feed, hashtags are extremely helpful at sifting through the clutter to find content that is most relevant to your interests. Users can search for specific content in the 'Explore' field by entering in keywords or hashtags or by sorting through Vine-created categories. Currently, the two loosely hotel-related categories are #travel and #food.

How Guests Are Already Using Vine

Despite the newness of the platform, travelers have been quick to create and share a wealth of content while on the road, most often of the hotels where they are staying. After doing a quick search on the app by using the #hotel hashtag, I discovered a variety of different types of hotel-related videos, from clips that toured you around hotels' rooms, public spaces, exteriors and nearby attractions. This kind of authentic, user-generated content (UGC) is gold for the social media manager, as it provides you with another opportunity to share a unique look at your hotel with your fan community.

That's all well and good, you may be thinking, but how accessible really is this content? Here are a few things to consider when doing your search:

While using the #hotel hashtag was useful for the purpose of writing this post, it obviously will not be the only term you'll want to use when searching for content about your specific hotel or restaurant. Try including terms related to your destination to better hone in on relevant content.
As previously mentioned, users frequently tag their posts with their location via foursquare. Frustratingly, this does not, at this point, mean that this content will show up on your venue's profile. Hopefully this will change soon, making the process of sourcing this content a far easier task.
Travelers staying at your property will likely tag their post with words similar to, but not exactly, your unique hotel's name. Just as we advise our clients when setting up social media searches, include variations of your hotel's name (e.g. Twitter handle, brand designation) when looking for content.
Remember, users can, and regularly do, share their videos on Twitter. Therefore, setting up searches in your social media client that match same key terms as above will only increase your chances of discovering UGC.

How Hotels Can Leverage the Platform

After searching the platform for content about your hotel, it's time to create videos for yourself. Not only is this process far less time-intensive, it is very easy to execute - even for the most novice of iPhone users. Here are a few examples of Revinate customer hotels that are already putting Vine to effective use:

Hyatt 48 Lex

This Midtown Manhattan property has used Vine to offer fans quick glimpses of the hotel's many appealing features, from a cozy look at the lounge's fireplace to a glance at the fully-equipped Hyatt Fit fitness room. The clip below showcases a panoramic view of the hotel's studio suite, giving guests a good sense of the room's size and amenities.

Hotel Andaluz

While this luxury downtown Albuquerque hotel is just getting started on Vine, their first video is worth mentioning, as it is a highly effective clip showcasing a live music event going on in the lobby. Tweeting about your hotel lobby's live jazz certainly is good practice, but being able to tweet it and preview it for your fans makes the content all the more effective.

The Roger Smith Hotel

Routinely recognized in the industry for their social media dedication, it's unsurprising to see the Roger Smith Hotel has already created over 60 Vine posts, that span from capturing behind-the-scenes interactions with colleagues, to promoting their hotel's own radio station, to giving a tour of the hotel's neighborhood buildings. There are also several endearing videos featuring Henry the dog, an (apparently) frequent patron of the hotel.

Looking Ahead

Although it's certainly unclear whether or not Vine has staying-power potential or is just another social outlet that will fade away, it's a platform that hotels can certainly benefit from. That said, before jumping in and creating a thousand Vine videos at once, remember to consider the same questions you (hopefully) asked yourself before creating that Facebook page or Twitter account, which are:

"Would creating content on this channel fit well with my brand's voice?"
"Are there meaningful objectives that could be achieved by engaging on this channel?"
"Do I have the human capital to regularly maintain a presence this channel?"

If you can answer "yes" to the questions above and are interested in finding a new way to engage your hotel's fans and future customers, then give Vine a try!

Posted by Greg in Best Practices, Hotel Examples, Industry News, Social Media, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

Blackmail in the Internet Age

Last week a link to the web page on the left was sent around the office. My immediate reaction was, "Ouch - how humiliating for the business." As a marketer, I immediately identified more with Fitness SF than with the Web shop seeking to be paid, although I also understand the frustration of not being paid for services rendered. The damage didn't end on the Fitness SF site. In fact, many people took to Yelp to continue the harrassment, giving the gym a 1 star rating and explaining that it doesn't pay its bills. As of today, the gym has an average rating of two stars. Prior to the Web page controversy, the gym regularly received four and five stars for great service and equipment.

What this example highlights is the power that the Web gives anyone to damage the reputation of a person or a business. Hoteliers are not impervious to internet blackmail. In fact, there is the potential of blackmail every time a guest has an issue and leaves unhappy, although for most, morals will overide the need for vengeance.

As we reported last month, TripAdvisor recently announced that it is stepping in and helping hoteliers who think they might be the victim of blackmail. Hoteliers who fear that a guest is going to write a bad review as payback for not giving him something for free, for example, can log into the owners center and use the 'report blackmail' form to explain the situation. By providing as many details as possible about the guest, TripAdvisor will be on alert for the review and will not post anything from that guest.

Obviously, the best way to avoid internet blackmail is to try to resolve guests' issues before they leave the property. If a guest has a legitimate grievance, make sure that you apologize, both when speaking to him and again via a card sent to his room. Most people recognize that everyone makes mistakes and a sincere apology can go a long way. If not, use your discretion with providing more.

Create a policy for grievances, detailing every issue that you can think of and what you can offer as remediation as a first step and then as a final step if the guest doesn't accept the first offer. Perhaps a free breakfast or drinks would help. Or maybe you can move him to an upgraded room. Then, make sure to ask if he is satisfied with your action. Once the guest says that he is satisfied, you can assume that he won't take it further. If he says that he is not satisfied, ask him what will satisfy him. Most people are too embarrassed to ask for more than they deserve.

But, if the guest does shoot for the stars, you can respond that you really want to ensure that he leaves happy, but you need to make sure that the hotel's response is in line with the seriousness of the grievance and there are policies in place to ensure that guests don't take advantage of the customer-service policy. If this is a repeat visitor or loyalty member with a legitimate issue, you might want to cave a bit more than a first-time guest. But if you sense that this guest will never be happy, report him to TripAdvisor and actively monitor your reviews across all review sites and OTAs in case it pops up. If it does appear on a different review site or OTA, respond to the review, if allowed by the site, apologizing again for not meeting his expectations and explaining that you did everything to try to meet his needs on site and regret that there was nothing you could do to satisfy him, short of giving him a free stay. Others reading the response will be smart enough to understand the situation. Then, make sure that you receive a flurry of great new reviews to push this one down the page.

Posted by Michelle in Best Practices, Reviews, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

Facebook Publishing Insights for Hotels

Facebook recently published an advertorial that, in adition to highlighting several of their product's features, shared some enlightening stats on how to optimize your brand page's posting strategy. While following these guidelines won't guarantee exponential fan engagement growth in the short-term, putting these frameworks into practice will undoubtedly improve your overall approach to sharing Facebook content on behalf of your hotel. Here are a few key points to consider:

Posts between 100 and 250 characters (less than 3 lines of text) see about 60% more likes, comments and shares than posts greater than 250 characters

Posts including a photo album, a picture or a video generate about 180%, 120%, and 100% more engagement than the average post, respectively.

Fill-in-the-blank posts generate about 90% more engagement than the average post.

Posts about top-of-mind topics, such as current events, holidays or news, will receive higher engagement levels. For example, posts mentioning Independance Day on July 4th generated about 90% more engagement than all posts published on that day.

Here are some excellent examples of hotel Facebook pages that really get it:

Post with less than 3 lines of text and inclusion of a visually stunning image:

Posts with photo galleries that promote the brand authentically.

Posts that effectively use the "fill in the blank" approach to encourage fan engagement.

Posts about top-of-mind topics that will be more relevant to fans.

Posted by Greg in Best Practices, customers, Facebook, Social Media, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

Success Story: Denihan Hospitality Group

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Revinate recently recognized Denihan Hospitality Group for its exemplary online reputation management in 2012. With 15 hotels in the portfolio, Denihan has successfully operationalized Revinate across all properties and ensured that staff across all departments use Revinate to improve sales, marketing, and decision-making at every level.

During 2012, Denihan relied on Revinate's reviews analysis reports when making major capital improvement decisions for several hotels in its portfolio. For example, when deciding the ideal room type mix for the 2013 renovation of the Affinia 50 Hotel, the Business Intelligence department turned to Revinate's Sentiment Analysis report. The report showed that “room size” and “cost and value” were review topics that the hotel was scoring lower on than its competitive set. Danette Opaczewski, EVP of Operations and Technology, says, "By combining Revinate review data about our suites with Market Matrix revenue statistics for all room types (e.g. how many suites were bought versus were upgraded at no or limited cost), we were able to determine that the property had too many suites." With this intelligence in hand, the company’s design and construction team reconfigured the hotel, converting some of the suites into more desirably sized rooms. This change will result in 41 new rooms, which will drive a significant increase in the asset's post-renovation value.

In addition, Denihan uses Revinate’s Sentiment Analysis report to track trends and issues at the property. In 2012, staff noticed that the topic of kitchen refrigerators was trending negatively for The Liaison Capitol Hill, an Affinia Hotel in Washington D.C. As most of the New York Affinia hotels have kitchens with refrigerators, the company quickly realized that the hotel hadn’t been managing guest expectations appropriately pre-arrival since refrigerators weren’t guaranteed. "By reacting quickly to this data," says Opaczewski, "we were able to refine our website and distribution channel communications and point out that refrigerators were available upon request.” With this refined messaging in place, the hotel’s room review sentiment score improved from 4.13/5 to 4.33/5 over the course of the year and was 10.5% higher than the competitive set.

Denihan's sales teams have also become fans of Revinate due to the influence that the reports have with clients. Opaczewski says, "The sales departments use Revinate reports in client meetings to show how the hotels fare against the competition in guest sentiment and quality scores. Showing clients a third party report that illustrates how much higher our properties rank than the competition across numerous metrics really makes an impact and often allows us to win business, even at a higher price.”

To determine pricing, the Revenue Management department uses Revinate’s Reviews Rating Comparison report in conjunction with TravelClick’s RateView for retail price positioning. Understanding that guests are willing to spend more at a top-rated hotel, they price higher when they lead their competitive set and more competitively when they don’t. The food and beverage team similarly has found Revinate's competitive index scoring helpful, as issues related to specific categories – from room service delivery to wait staff performance – are individually evaluated against the competitive set.

Finally, the Denihan marketing teams use Revinate’s social media monitoring tools to quickly and easily engage with guests. Opaczewski says, “We use Revinate day to day to engage on social networks but used it extensively during Hurricane Sandy for monitoring our hotels that experienced extended service limitations. By reaching out directly and expeditiously to the guests during a difficult time, we created many loyal guests and garnered many positive reviews."

By operationalizing online reputation management across every team at every hotel in the portfolio, Denihan Hospitality Group has ensured that staff at each level of the company operates with the voice-of-the-customer in mind. To ensure that this standard continues, Denihan’s Corporate Operations team includes Revinate’s Guest Satisfaction Reports as part of the company’s annual corporate management performance review, where scores related to hotels’ review scores and frequency are compared against goals to determine management incentives. This policy appears to be working; over the course of a year, the portfolio improved its overall review rating score from 4.14 to 4.17, exceeded its review recommended score goal by 5% and received a higher average TripAdvisor Popularity Index score than its competitors. And, each property exceeded its review frequency goal by at least 50%, with the vast majority seeing drastic improvements to their individual review ratings. Look no further than the The James New York for evidence of this win, as the hotel climbed from #93 to #42 on TripAdvisor in 2012 and improved its overall review rating from 4.29 to 4.40. Judging by these positive gains, the future of Denihan’s online reputation has never looked brighter.

Posted by Greg in Best Practices, customers, Success Stories, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

A Lego Lesson in Customer Service for Hoteliers

Earlier last week, we came across a story on LEGO customer service that will impress even the most fervently service-oriented hoteliers. The short version of the story is that a customer service rep from LEGO, after receiving an e-mail from a young seven year old who had recently lost a piece in his newly-purchased set, displayed a generous amount of customer service savvy by promising to replace the missing minifigure with an even-better minifigure.

The fact that LEGO offered to replace the merchandise for the boy was an admirable service gesture. The rep's promise to send an enhanced version of the minifigure goes one step further. But what makes this story so noteworthy is how well the customer service rep understands his customer and his brand. In his note back to the boy he appeals to the child's imagination and dreams, saying, "Luka, I told Sensei Wu that losing your Jay minifigure was purely an accident and that you would never ever ever let it happen ever again."

As hoteliers, this kind of detailed, personal customer feedback will look familiar; the service rendered may be different, but the cycle is just the same. Guests check-in with requests, questions and service inquiries, and check-out feeling either satisfied that their needs were met or disgruntled by the hotel's disregard. Service failures are inevitable, and when they do occur the hotel dutifully recovers with a response. This is the standard guest service procedure. What LEGO was able to accomplish went above and beyond the standard customer service call.

In the end, the manner in which a customer is treated will either build or diminsh advocacy for your brand and is a fact that's inherently played out online in the public's eye. Whether it's in the form of a review, blog story, tweet or Facebook post, the ripple effects of exemplary customer service only augment your online reputation. May we all learn from LEGO this lesson.

Image Credit: http://twitter.com/lukaapps, Yahoo! Games

Posted by Greg in Best Practices, Fun, Management Responses, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

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A Lego Lesson in Customer Service for Hoteliers

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