Facebook & Twitter: What are the new hotels’ marketing tools ROI?

Melanie Nayer
Source: 4hoteliers

Twitter (launched in July 2006) and Facebook (February 2004) have become since several years the most popular of an estimated 100 websites that offer their members to do micro-blogging. Through their account, the users can share brief text updates, photos, video and audio clips with everyone or restricted chosen groups.  Not surprising then, that number of tourism suppliers and destinations use those platforms to promote, market themselves. Indeed, the social medias allow the companies to create dialogue among existing and potential visitors, customers, to build and solidify relationships.

Hoteliers & their respective managers have the opportunity to make announcements on upcoming events / news, to post photos of the hotel, to reply directly to their followers, to ask for feedbacks, to make deals and do some promotions.  Twitter can also be used as a hiring tool for example by announcing publically when there are vacant positions. One of the main advantages of hotels presence on those websites is that they can offer real-time information and updates about their business.

 In another hand, it represents a lot of time spent for the marketing staff to post links , updates and photos. 

Source: ivisitorguide.blogspot.com  

Therefore, it is important for hoteliers to define the return on investment of using those marketing tools. Kantar Media Compete (digital expertise company) published a recent study setting that social media have an impact on consumer purchasing decisions, précising that Twitter tends to influence more purchases than Facebook. They based their results on the quarterly “Online Shopper Intelligence study” that consisted to survey 2 574 online purchasers between July 14 and August 8, 2011. While Twitter feeds influenced 35% of respondent to purchase, Facebook updates only persuade 23,5% of them. It turns out that Facebook is considered as being a platform to share stunning photo and stories to influence potential customers while Tweeter is the actual place to seal the deal. The apparent reason would be that Twitter feeds faster and more than Facebook. Even though the introduction of the “timeline” permits Facebook to make a great advancement.

Keywords: Facebook, Twitter, Hotels, Marketing tools, ROI

Source: Nayer, M. (2011, September 28). Twitter and Facebook are now established marketing tools - How about their ROI? Retrieved on January 2012, on 4 Hoteliers: http://www.4hoteliers.com/4hots_fshw.php?mwi=6337