Social media is both an opportunity and a threat for hotels. An opportunity because social selling is becoming a big revenue generator, and social is a space where brand building is endemic. But it’s a threat too – because many hoteliers lack time, knowledge and resources to feel they can be truly effective. Here’s what hotel teams are actually doing in practice to make their social channels work.
With 2 in 5 millennials saying hotel and travel images on social media influence their bookings, and 75% stating their travel decisions are influenced by social media (Brittany Ferries), it’s clear that social media isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
Hotels are facing a rising tide of competition, and a growing need to demonstrate the unique and authentic experiences guests can have at their properties. Marketing teams are time-stretched, with a sea of possible social channels and tactics in front of them. How do they actually hone in on the channels and strategies that will bring them success?
Here, hoteliers share how they’re doing it.
1. Pinpointing branded and property content
Realising there are two distinctive types of social content is a key moment for hotel teams. There’s content about the hotel property itself – F&B, rooms, experiences – and there’s the content that sits above this, to tell the story of the hotel brand and its ethos. For hotel groups such as Red Carnation, this may be done through separate profiles.
“With the individual hotel accounts, we have the team members to talk about, the interiors, the amazing F&B offerings and the experiences we can tie into our wider marketing strategy,” Molly Peel, Head of Social Media at Red Carnation explained. “For Red Carnation [central channels], we’re more brand focused – for example, how specific things happening at a hotel might feed into wider sustainability conversations we’re having.”
Some hotels have looked extensively at data and analytics to focus in on one type of content per channel. “TikTok is very much spa focused for us, as that’s what the algorithm is liking us to share,” said Chloe Parry, Content Marketing Executive at Carden Park Hotel. “And our YouTube channel is just for golf. That’s working really well for us, because it means the golf audience isn’t being hit with spa, outdoor or family content.”
Discovering which content works on specific channels is one breakthrough to success, although many hoteliers agree that video should be a central pillar. “One of our targets is to have +70% of our content to be video alone,” Peel said. “We just find it performs a lot better. It’s a lot more engaging, and we get to showcase more of the spaces.” Parry agrees: “We’ve got 4.1 million views on one of our TikTok videos. As soon as a video goes viral, our website views, bookings, and calls coming into reservations are going up.”
2. Deepening relationships with staff, partners and influencers
Despite being digital, enjoying success on social media is all about human connections. And this begins with the hotel staff. Red Carnation has created WhatsApp groups that staff from each hotel can join if they have a passion for social media. “They live and breathe those properties,” Peel said. “We call them our employee generated content teams, because it’s a great opportunity for us to tell those stories through social without having to be everywhere all at once. They go around and really capture these moments that you don’t see sat in the head office.”
Red Carnation’s social experts provide training for these staff members, and stay in regular contact with them, giving pointers on how to create good social content. The success of this had led to Red Carnation rolling out similar WhatsApp groups for the advisors and agents they work with locally to their hotels. For example, the main reason people want to visit the Xigera Safari Lodge in Botswana is for the wildlife. By having a direct line of communication with those involved with the wildlife locally, they can gain access to the latest animal sightings and other experiences happening in real time. “This is not necessarily something that we can always communicate with our more structured photo strategy,” Peel said. “Yet there’s all this amazing content just sitting there.”
When it comes to producing photography and videos for its properties, Red Carnation continues to embrace the ethos of nurturing relationships. With a “little black book” of people they work with in each location, it’s important for the hotel group to build up a relationship of trust and mutual understanding. “We only work with one or two videographers in London because it’s taken time to get them to know what we’re all about,” Peel said. “We want people who really get the brand.”
For hotel marketing teams, this sentiment extends to working with influencers too. “I don’t even know how many messages we get each day from influencers and user generated content creators,” Parry said. “We look at their numbers – followers and engagement – and we’ll see if they’re relevant to us. We want influencers to show our hotel to a bigger audience that we’re not hitting. So if the audience isn’t quite relevant, then we probably won’t work with them.”
3. Finding ways to manage the volume
The amount of work that social media can generate is one aspect that can feel overwhelming and off-putting for hotel marketing teams. Checking-in with colleagues across the hotel can help with staying focused on the content that is actually needed. “We speak with our commercial team because we want to make sure that the messages going out also support the business at the time,” Parry said.
Red Carnation uses Hootsuite to schedule content across all social channels, and manage the inboxes for those channels too. “Hootsuite has made my job 100 times easier,” Peel said. “When you’re managing +20 accounts at a time, it can be quite overwhelming. A big thing for us is creating that authentic connection with our guests through social conversation. People are going to social media channels now as search engines, and we need to provide an insightful level of personalised communication.”
The use of AI is weaving its way into the process of managing social channels for hotel teams, although human input is still really important to hoteliers. “We take our best performing posts and put them into an AI-plugin, which regenerates the content for us to use again,” Peel explained. “It helps maintain that consistency and loyalty. But I’m a big believer there’s no harm in spending half an hour of your day scrolling, seeing what other brands are doing and what people are talking about.”
The social team at Carden Park Hotel uses AI to help with their captions. “If something’s not sounding quite right – if I want it to be a little more quirky or attention-grabbing, we’ll use ChatGPT and see what comes out,” Parry said. “We always tailor it so we’re not copying directly what it’s produced.” Again, Parry believes human input is vital for success on social media. “Instagram and Facebook are looking to incorporate AI into their comments, which I don’t agree with in all honesty,” she said. “That takes away the human interaction, and that’s the reason social media was set up.”
4. Focusing on community
Although most hotels ultimately want to drive bookings through social media, they realise that hard selling is never going to work on this medium. “Social selling is a huge one for us, but not making it so obviously commercial,” Peel said. “We want to talk about it in a way that’s a lot more subtle, luxury, building our community. It sounds really cheesy, but it’s about inspiring the next generation of Red Carnation through social media.”
Although Parry works solely on organic social media, she collaborates closely with her colleagues who manage paid social marketing. “We work really closely to create the ads, so that our ads and our organic socials match. They’ve still got the same tone of voice, and they’re really enticing people.” Focusing on target audiences and the content that really speaks to them is what ultimately leads to conversion. “We’re not just posting just because it looks pretty,” Parry said. “We want to entice people to come in and book. Organic is still so important, because that’s how people discover you as well – it’s not just ads.”
Connecting as humans is what it’s all about for the most successful hotel social teams. “It’s really about building that community, talking to that community, and almost reporting on that positive sentiment that comes through from those conversations,” Peel said. “So how can you leverage those relationships with your guests, and with your teams, to tell those stories in a really true and authentic way?”
Social media can seem like an untameable beast for hotel marketing teams struggling to keep multiple plates spinning. By honing in on the aspects of social media that will actually make a difference – and having solid processes in place – social media channels can help hotels win in more ways than one.
Listen to more insights from Molly Peel and Chloe Parry on the following two episodes of the Hoteliers’ Voice series on Travel Market Life podcast:
Social media for a global portfolio with Red Carnation Hotels
Managing a plethora of social channels with Carden Park Hotel
Ryan Haynes
Director | Lead Consultant
Haynes MarComs Ltd
