The Revinate Blog

Facebook Introduces 'Offers' for Brands

A few months ago, we partnered with our friends at BCV to bring hotels and restaurants up to speed on the Facebook Timeline rollout to brands. In the webinar we discussed all the key ingredients to creating a hearty Timeline for your brand.

As a true social media enthusiast, I am a huge fan of Timeline and it’s ability to aid in telling your brand’s story – how you came to be and all the interesting milestones along the way. In addition to the Timeline rollout, Facebook also recently launched “Offers,” a free service that allows your brand to post offers to Facebook users (e.g. “enjoy a complimentary dessert with the purchase of two entrees”). Fans that click to receive the offer are sent an email to present to your venue (by printing out or displaying on their mobile device) with the offer and any special restrictions clearly displayed in the email. Special restrictions may include such language as “one redemption per customer per day” to keep someone from printing out 100 copies or other abuse. You can also set limits on these offers, similar to a Groupon or LivingSocial Deal where the offer is “sold out” after a set number of people click to receive the deal, helping to limit your exposure.

Offers are a great way to experiment with your Timeline. Not only can they provide engaging content for your fans that require direct action but they also allow you to tie an ROI back to your Facebook efforts. When setting up an offer, be sure to create proper tracking codes in your PMS/POS that allow your staff to indicate when an offer has been redeemed. As with any marketing campaign, it’s always important to brief your staff on the offer details and define a process for tracking and managing redemptions. In addition, I recommend creating a simple spreadsheet that lists each redemption and the total that was spent by the customer during that visit, allowing you to report on how much additional revenue your offers brought in.

So what do you need to get started? If your business has a local address listed in its profile, admins will see the option to create an Offer in the status bar. Here are the specs for Offers:

• A 90-character (maximum) headline
• A 900-character (maximum — much less recommended!) terms and conditions
• A 90 x 90-pixel square image to accompany the post

I’m always an advocate for building customer loyalty and believe that Offers are a great way to increase your fan base and thank them for their loyalty. So before you jump on the flash-sale bandwagon, why not reward the people that care about your business most? With a simple plan in place, there’s not much to lose with testing out this free service!

The Importance of Online Reputation Across the Hospitality Value Chain

Whether you work at a hotel or for a brand, at an asset management company or for an ownership group, everyone in the hospitality value chain is seeking a different spin on the same thing - - reliable, actionable data on guest satisfaction and hotel performance. Learn how Revinate can help by viewing the following webinar recording.

Revenue Management Webinar Materials

Thanks to everyone that joined us today for the Webinar about the evolving role of the hotel revenue manager. A special thanks to our guest speaker, Cary Broussard, for her insight. If you missed the event or would like to share the webinar materials with your colleagues, please access a PDF of the slides here, and view a recording below. As always, we would love any feedback you have about the event.

A New Frontier for Revenue Managers

The only constant in revenue management seems to be change. While revenue managers have always had to deal with perishable inventory, multiple booking channels, stiff competition and balancing supply and demand, today there are infinitely more channels and sources of data to examine, such as Flash sales, OTA's, online review sites, social media and more.

Revenue Managers have an incredible opportunity today to take a leadership role at a property or brand and help other departments analyze data, set goals and compete better. Join Cary Broussard, adjunct professor at NYU, School for Hospitality, and Revinate's Michelle Wohl for a one-hour Webinar on Wednesday, October 12th, that will help Revenue Managers maximize their leadership effectiveness.

Sign up here.

 

Social Media Ambush Webinar Materials

This morning Daniel Edward Craig and I hosted a Webinar about what to do when guests threaten you with social media retaliation or use social media to request special attention. While social media brings incredible opportinuies for hoteliers, it can also bring out the greediness in people who understand the power of the platforms to spread opinions. We shared some real scenarios and discussed how best to respond.

Please find a link to the Webinar slides here.  You can also view the Webinar below. As always, we would love any feedback.

Location-Based Services for Hotels - Webinar Materials

Thanks to Benji Greenberg of BCV and Revinate's Linden Freeman for a great Webinar this morning about how hoteliers can use foursquare to drive loyalty and sales.

We received a lot of great questions during the event and Linden's responses are below. Scroll all the way down for a copy of the slide deck and a recording of the Webinar.

If you are offering a Special, how do you monitor the people who want to take advantage of it?

If a person has noticed your Special and wants to redeem it, they have to unlock the Special by meeting the criteria you have set for them (e.g. checking-in three times within a week). They will then need to show their phone screen to one of your employees that indicates they’ve unlocked the special. It’s important to make sure that all of your employees are aware of any Specials you’re offering on foursquare and that they know how to recognize if a Special has been unlocked. Foursquare has a flyer you can share with employees that shows what it looks like when a Special has been unlocked on a user’s phone. (And of course Revinate customers can access the flyers after creating Specials within Revinate.)

The Gowalla application just introduced a new concept of “Travel and Storytelling.” How do you think this could be utilized and could it serve as a better alternative to foursquare?

Gowalla recently launched an updated version of its application, which incorporates two new key areas: travel and storytelling. This update makes them now more of a city travel guide, downplaying the role of check-ins in favor of discovery, travel and storytelling. Checking-in is now just one aspect of the app. When you pull up Gowalla on your phone now, you’ll still see the main activity feed where you can find the activity from your friends. But now, instead of a stream of check-ins, you’ll notice people hanging out together, sharing photos, and talking to each other in smaller groups, which Gowalla calls “stories.” Gowalla is building more than 60-curated city guides that help tell people where to go and what to see. Users are also encouraged to build “stories” out of their travels, which start with their check-ins but can be enhanced by tagging other people and gathering pictures uploaded for particular stories. With this relaunch it seems that Gowalla is trying to differentiate itself from foursquare by moving away from game-based elements, and focusing on local discovery. Since foursquare has such a larger user-base, I feel that it’s still your safest bet. Foursquare also provides businesses with the ability to create and run Specials, which provides real value to customers and a way to entice people to go to your business. It’s important to do your homework though with the different location-based services out there and see if your target audience is using them. If people are actively engaged on Gowalla in your market, then it’s worth claiming your business and paying attention to what people are saying about your location.

You mentioned the importance of being authentic with responses to people who check-in on foursquare, but how do you do this without having any information on this person?

When people check-in to your venue on foursquare, they have the ability to also leave a tip, post a photo and/or share their check-in to their Twitter/Facebook accounts. If you see that someone has posted a tip or a photo, this gives you a little more information about what they think about the venue. Maybe it’s something specific to your hotel lobby – you could tweet back to them that you hope they like the lobby, and why not check-out the view of the beach outside? When people tweet their check-in, they can add a comment about what they're doing. So if the person has linked their Twitter account to their foursquare profile, you could check out the person’s Twitter account and see if they have said anything more specific about what they're doing, which would allow you to customize your response. Otherwise, I think the fact that you're tweeting back to them and welcoming them to your hotel is a great way to surprise and delight them.

How about foursquare in international markets? Is it becoming more widely adopted, or is it mainly just used within the U.S.?

Foursquare is definitely starting to gain more traction in international markets. In February 2011, foursquare announced that they launched five translations of their application - in French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. Since then they’ve seen that these five new languages represent some of our fastest growing areas internationally. Just recently at the beginning of September 2011, they announced the launch of five more languages (Bahasa Indonesia, Korean, Protugese, Russian and Thai). For more information on their integration of foreign languages, checkout their blog article here.

In case you missed the webinar, you can find a copy of the slides here and a recording below. As always, we would love your feedback on the webinar and would love to know what other topics you would like to see us cover.

Revinate's Fall Webinar Lineup Announced

Revinate, the new standard for guest satisfaction, is pleased to announce its Fall Webinar calendar. Please join us for the following, free online events:

Social Media Ambush: How to handle sensitive situations, from requests for special treatment to review blackmail
Tuesday, September 27
9am Pacific/12pm Eastern

Handling challenging guests is nothing new to the hotel industry, but the public, viral nature of social media makes these situations particularly daunting. And while the vast majority of travelers conduct themselves on social networks with fairness and integrity, it’s this small minority that cause headaches for staff. Join hospitality veteran Daniel Edward Craig and Revinate's Michelle Wohl for advice on dealing with this new threat.

Sign up Now

Revenue Management - Building Your Leadership Equity
Wednesday, October 12th
10am Pacific/1pm Eastern

The role of revenue management is changing dramatically, given new distribution channels and social media. Revenue Managers are in the unique position of being able to drive important decisions and lead the hotel towards its sales goals. Join Cary Broussard, Marketing Professor at NYU Tisch Center and Owner of Broussard Communications and Michelle Wohl, VP of Marketing at Revinate, for a free Webinar to learn how Revenue Managers can take on more responsibility and gain more visibility, while keeping the day manageable.

Sign up Now

A Deep Dive into Revinate

Thursday, October 13th
9am Pacific/12pm Eastern

With online reviews and recommendations driving more bookings than either location or price, hotels must ensure that they're on top of their online reputation. Revinate is a software platform designed exclusively for the hospitality industry that makes it easy to take control of your online reputation by using online reviews and social media to learn from and connect with travelers. Join us for a deep dive into the product to understand why the leaders in hospitality have come to depend upon it. Note: As this Webinar is exclusively for hotel/brand employees, please register using your work email.

Sign up Now

Location-Based Services for Hotels - A Best Practices Webinar

'Checking In' means one thing to hoteliers. It means something very different to the millions of people who use location-based services like Foursquare, Facebook Places, Google Places and Gowalla. Join Benji Greenberg of BCV and Linden Freeman of Revinate for an hour of straight talk about what hotels should, and shouldn't be doing on these social platforms.

During the session we will:

• discuss the leading location-based services and explain how they differ
• share best practices from the hospitality industry
• provide recommendations for rewards and deals
• see how Revinate incorporates LBS into its industry-leading software solution for hoteliers

When: Tuesday, September 13th at 10am Pacific/1pm Eastern

To attend, you must sign up in advance here. We will be recording the session so even if you can't attend, please sign up and we will notify you when the recording has been posted.

See you online.

 

Online Review Clinic - Recording Available

Daniel Edward Craig and I held our July Online Review Clinic this morning. Hoteliers from all over the world joined the live Webinar to hear tips for responding to reviews and critiques of management responses that were submitted in advance.

If you missed the event, you can watch a recording, below, or download a PDF of the slides here.

As always, we would love your feedback and ideas for future webinars.

Review Clinic - Webinar Materials Available for Download

Thanks to everyone that joined us on the Webinar this morning to discuss responding to online reviews. A special thank you to Daniel Edward Craig for his expertise and to everyone that submitted reviews for us to look at.

If you were able to attend the event, please provide your feedback in the comments section. We would love to host these events on a regular basis but we want to ensure we're covering the most important topics. Our next Online Review Clinic will be on July 28th at 9am Pacific/noon Eastern. Sign up here and let us know what reviews to cover.

If you would like a copy of today's presentation, you can download it here. Please feel free to forward it to colleagues as well. And if you would like to view the Webinar in its entirety, please watch it below.