BUDGET DEFYING LAUNCH STRATEGIES

USING SOCIAL MEDIA

AGENDA

Social Media Marketing – Why?

Type of Social Media & Traffic analytics

Top 10 ways for Hotels to promote Social Media

How Hotels are embracing Social Media

Case of International Hotel Brands

Case of Citymax Hotels

Best Practices

How to track your success?

Challenges ahead

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Social media can be defined as blending of technology and social interaction

for the co-creation of value. It is basically a type of online media that expedites

conversation as opposed to traditional media, which delivers content but doesn't

allow readers/viewers/listeners to participate in the creation where as Social

media allows people/potential end – users to talk, participate, share, network, and

bookmark online.

A recent (2010) report published by HVS suggest that social media is so

influential that the interactive marketing spend will near $55 billion and

represent 21% of all marketing spending by 2014. Social media will comprise 3%

to 6% of the interactive marketing spend. Additionally, the global average time

spent per person on social networking sites is now nearly 5.5 hours per month.

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media)

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING - WHY?

Here are just some aspects of what social media can do for you:

Reinforce your message and help it go viral;

Embrace and project your brand’s personality;

Allow for real-time, two-way communication;

Allow you to communicate at point-of-need;

Build business and generate ROI;

(Source: www.hvs.com)

TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS

Some commonly used and prominent social media platforms by Hotels on the

internet are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube

Below is the screenshot of the homepage for www.facebook.com

TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS

Some facts about Facebook

MENA’s top five Facebook country markets are Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia,

Saudi Arabia and the UAE, account for 70% of all users in the region

There are 5 million Facebook users in GCC off which UAE accounts for

31%, Saudi for 45% and North Africa has 7.7 million

UAE has the oldest Facebook community in MENA with 41% of users being

over 30 years old,28% being 25-29 years old and 31% being under 25

years and majority (63%) are male

Globally, people spend around 700 billion minutes per month on facebook

and the average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and

events

TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS

UAE - Traffic analytics for Facebook (Source: Spot on PR)

69% of UAE Facebook users are 63% of UAE Facebook users are Male

above 25

TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS

LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) with more than 67 million users representing 150

industries around the world, LinkedIn is a fast-growing professional networking site

that allows members to create business contacts, search for jobs, and find

potential clients.

Below is the screenshot of the homepage for www.linkedin.com

TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS

Some facts about LinkedIn:

Launched on 5 May, 2003

On an average 36.5 million people visit LinkedIn each month

On a daily basis 1.9 million users log on to Linkedin globally and 14,900 in

UAE

38% in the age group of 35-49 are the dominant users

Globally, linkedIn has approximately 22.6 million daily page views in

comparison to 215,000 as seen in UAE

TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS

Global Traffic analytics for Linkedin (Source: www.quantcast.com)

TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS

Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006

(launched publicly in July 2006), is a social networking and micro-blogging

service that allows users to post their latest updates.

Below is a screenshot of the homepage for Twitter www.twitter.com

TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS

Some facts about twitter are:

Twitter (TPS) recently published that they have 50 million tweets per day

globally — that’s an average of 600 tweets per second

As of (Q2-2010) Twitter had 105 million registered users globally as revealed

by co-owner Biz Stone with 30,000 people joining twitter per day

Nevertheless, as of 2009 UAE led twitter usage in the MENA region

accounting for nearly 5,778 of the total which stood at 14,296

TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS

Some facts about twitter are:

Majority (35%) of the users tweet 2-5 times a day while only 16% tweet

more than 10 times

Nearly 50% of the regional users opened a twitter account for personal

reasons as compared to only 10% being used for business

Arab and Asians were the dominant users by nationality closely followed by

Europeans expats

Source: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/twitter & http://www.spotonpr.com

TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS

Traffic analytics for Twitter (Source: www.arabcrunch.com & Spot On PR)

Visitation statistics for Twitter.com Time spent on twitter globally 2008-09

Twitter users in Middle East, 2009

TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS

YouTube was founded in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim,

who were all early employees of Paypal. YouTube is the leader in online video,

sharing original videos worldwide through a Web experience. YouTube allows

people to easily upload and share video clips across the Internet through

websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email.

Below is the homepage for www.youtube.com

TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS

Some facts about YouTube:

As of May 2010, YouTube exceeded 2 billion views a day globally

Average time spend by a person is approximately 15 minutes a day

70% of the traffic comes from outside the USA

100 top advertisers have run campaigns on YouTube and Google content

network

The number of advertisers using display adds on the site increased 10 fold in

the past year

Source: www.websitemonitoring.com

TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS

Traffic analytics for Youtube (Source: www.quantcast.com)

Note: The above data in graph is available only for the US demographic

TOP 10 WAYS TO PROMOTE HOTELS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Do Your HOMEWORK

Top 10 ways to promote your hotel could be:

I - CREATE and upload custom pages on Facebook example of a page by

Citymax for „Maxx Music Bar & Grill/Al Barsha‟

TOP 10 WAYS TO PROMOTE HOTELS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Create & Promote destination blogs such as http://blog.aquaresorts.com/ for

local events, news

Create and promote videos on www.youtube.com YouTube is the fourth largest

search engine and drives significant traffic

Create an account on Flickr/picassa for photo sharing and post hotel and

destination photos on the sites

Create a custom profile on Twitter with the hotel's phone number and website

address in the background http://twitter.com/CitymaxHotels

TOP 10 WAYS TO PROMOTE HOTELS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

II - MANAGE & PROMOTE

Integrating and Cross-Linking Channels - Cross-link Flickr, Twitter, and

YouTube to your Facebook account. Integrating and Cross-linking the channels

will help you in optimization, keeping it fresh as well as in expanding your

network. Bring live feeds from your social media channels into your website.

Example: http://www.nickhotel.com/html/social-media.asp

Grow Fan –base on facebook and other platforms where your hotel profile is

listed

Use online news channels for press releases and articles

TOP 10 WAYS TO PROMOTE HOTELS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

III - MONITOR

Create a Social Media Reviews platform on your website to encourage

users to upload viral content on your website

Monitor social media channels and review site

Awareness of no. of followers

Conversion through promo codes & Google analytics

Relationships

Engagement

USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA – INTERNATIONAL HOTEL BRANDS

1.Grow Fan-base

Starwood hotels & Resorts was one of the first hotel companies to introduce a

social networking website. Some initiatives by Starwood so far have been:

In June 2006, travelers from around the world vied for a chance to win a

vacation in its “Sherabration Sweepstakes” by sharing a personal travel story

Then, to publicise its $6 billion makeover, Sheraton gave away 2,100 free

nights at 86 new or newly renovated hotels was initiated in October 2009

The company also launched a new social media platform „Sheraton shared

moments‟ via multiple online communities including Twitter, Facebook users

share travel experiences with friends/family and public to win a dream holiday at

one of their properties in December 2009

USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA – BY INTERNATIONAL HOTEL BRANDS

1.Grow Fan-base

Aloft by Starwood introduced Second Life (www.secodnlife.com) and a first

hotel at doing so. Since its debut in 2006 it takes the inputs of second life

residents/consumer feedback on design features and incorporates it into real

aloft projects. Below is a screenshot of the actual website

USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA – BY INTERNATIONAL HOTEL BRANDS

1.Grow Fan-base

Intercontinental Hotels & Resorts (hereafter IHG) partnered with Communispace

to build and facilitate three private online communities of some 300 members

each, all members of IHG’s loyalty program. At the core of the approach to social

marketing is the idea that IHG puts its customer at the center of everything.

The company recently extended its social marketing footprint by launching a

public community open to Priority Club Rewards members. IHG also utilizes

third-party social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Below is a

screenshot of the winter offer by IHG

USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA - BY CITYMAX HOTELS

1.Grow Fan-base

Citymax has consciously made an effort to actively use social media platforms

such as Facebook and Twitter to maximise our reach to the target audience. We

however, would like to give our hotels and F&B outlets an individual identity and

hence have separate pages for each. Below is a screenshot of these

CASE OF CITYMAX HOTELS

1.Grow Fan-base

CASE OF CITYMAX HOTELS

1.Grow Fan-base

Citymax Hotels also intends to reach out to the regional GCC market and is

profiled on Maktoob by yahoo:

http://www.ppc2you.com/vb/

www.zawya.com/arabic/story.cfm

www.al-s3odi.com/vb

Our consumer/guest feedback for Citymax, Al Barsha suggest that they are

happy with the hotels location close to Mall of the Emirates (MOE) and pricing.

Moving forward we intend to be in all Saudi forums such as

www.star28.com

www.saudi-stock.net

www.khass.com/vb/index.php

SOCIAL MEDIA – BEST INDUSTRY PRACTICES

1.Grow Fan-base

Social media makes your brand real. Hotels are now increasingly making social

media an integral part of their outreach. Some general tips for using social

media:

Be authentic and create compelling content to bring your brand to life

Live your brand and show your personality

Be engaging and generate feedback

Know your audience

Repackage what you have, e.g., link across platforms and take your content

from other areas such as press releases and websites

Combine social media with offline in-person events to solidify relationships

Other useful tips are interact with people/potential guests, tell stories,

optimize different channels, aim at user-generated content and lastly, be

curious and experiment

Source: (www.hvs.com)

TRACKING SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS

1.Grow Fan-base

To tackle the overload there are ways to track and monitor among the various

social media – and most of them are free. Third-party tools and technology such

as Google Alerts at http://www.google.com/alerts or eBuzz Connect can be

very useful.

Twitter offers myriad tracking apps such as Trendistic, Tweeteffect and

Twinfluence. Checking for feedback can become your 2010 real-time research

and development model. Other aspects to consider are:

Benchmarking – note the obvious numbers

Note the less obvious benchmarks- rankings/ferrals and customer satisfaction

scores

Note ROI benchmarks - How much are you paying to acquire customers via

marketing or other channels

SOCIAL MEDIA: CHALLENGES AHEAD

AUDIENCE INPUT/SUGGESTIONS ?

SOURCES & REFERENCES USED

SOURCES

How are hotels embracing social media in 2010 – by www.hvs.com February 2010

www.quantcast.com

www.hospitalitynet.org

www.websitemonitoring.com

www.arabcruch.com

www.spotonpr.com

www.nielsen.com

THANK YOU