THE INAUGURAL SOCIAL MEDIA AWARD WINNERS ACCOMPLISHED THE MOST WITH THEIR POSTS, PINS AND TWEETS.
After being a relative latecomer to marketing via social media, the hotel industry now boasts many successful and innovative social media campaigns. To celebrate this, HOTELS Magazine this year launched the Social Hotel Awards.
After receiving more than 120 entries in 10 categories, winners were chosen by a panel of social media experts and the HOTELS editorial staff. Categories ranged from best Facebook page to best reputation management, and entries were evaluated for their quality, creativity and reflection of the brand’s voice and goal accomplishment, among other criteria. The award categories are divided by hotel brand and individual property.
Congratulations to all of the winners, and thanks to everyone that submitted entries.
BEST BLOG
BY BRAND
THOMPSON HOTELS, New York City
DESCRIPTION: Thompson gave its Room 100 blog a makeover in the summer of 2011 to increase monthly unique visitors from 2,000 to 25,000. Over three months, Room 100 underwent its transformation from a Flash-built, basic text and photo blog to a customized WordPress website. Biweekly newsletters to all past and present Thompson Hotels guests were sent to promote the blog’s new, offbeat content covering tastemakers and curiosities. Instagram posts and Facebook and Twitter chatter are pulled into the blog through a customized feed, and a direct booking widget was installed.
RESULTS: By January 2012 the newsletter open rates rose 57%. The blog subscriber list grew 25%, and revenue from the newsletter went up 3,017%. Monthly unique visitors also grew to 29,104, surpassing Thompson’s goal.
RUNNER-UP: Marriott International
JUDGES’ COMMENTS: “The Thompson blog was well-designed and conceived, with a very broad goal of establishing a point of view on culturally significant interests.”
BY PROPERTY
THE PFISTER HOTEL, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
DESCRIPTION: The hotel created the Pfister Narrator program, in which a writer-in-residence is hired to spend time in the hotel’s lobby, speaking with visitors and guests and sharing their stories on the Pfister’s blog with the goal of increasing website traffic and engaging guests on a personal level. The budget for the program is the Narrator’s choice of three payment types: US$1,000 stipend per month, a scholarship for continuing education or a donation to a charity of choice.
RESULTS: Between January 1, 2011, and April 1, 2012, the website saw 569,051 visits, about 75% of which were new visits.
RUNNER-UP: The Broadmoor, Colorado Springs, Colorado
JUDGES’ COMMENTS: “Very nicely done. This hotel took the forward-leaning step to hire a narrator. The blog posts are extremely well-written — long form and creative in nature with a lot of personality.”
BEST INTEGRATED DIGITAL CAMPAIGN
BY BRAND
DOUBLETREE BY HILTON
DESCRIPTION: As part of the 2011 rebrand from DoubleTree to DoubleTree by Hilton, the brand launched the The DoubleTree by Hilton Cookie CAREavan Tour, a U.S. bus tour to deliver cookies to create awareness and engage its target demographic of 30- to 45-year-old male and female middle-class business travelers and families. The campaign included a Facebook app with a real-time map of where the cookie CAREavan was, relevant tweets in a real-time Twitter stream, a sweepstakes entry form for free stays at the hotels, YouTube videos, Flickr integration and Facebook sharing capabilities.
RESULTS: The campaign garnered 29,261 new Facebook likes — a 125% increase — and 708 new Twitter followers, a 4% increase. The CAREavan sweepstakes received 10,525 entries and added 767 Hilton HHonors enrollments.
RUNNER-UP: (tie) Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, Toronto; Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Toronto
JUDGES’ COMMENTS: “Great way to highlight one of the brand’s differentiating features, engage with new and returning guests, and create original ideas that received sizable media attention.”
BY PROPERTY
THE PFISTER HOTEL, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
DESCRIPTION: The Pfister Hotel engaged social media fans to vote for an artist for the hotel’s annual Artist In Residence (AIR) program, in its fourth year. The hotel created six videos of the finalists and had its internal web team build a custom Facebook page application to cast votes.
RESULTS: The hotel received over 3,500 votes for the AIR finalists through combined digital and traditional methods, over 10,000 visits to the AIR Facebook voting tab and over 1,600 referrals from The Pfister Hotel website.
RUNNER-UP: The Betsy Hotel, Miami Beach, Florida JUDGES’ COMMENTS: “The general leadership the hotel is showing to create a property artist in residence is phenomenal.”
BEST FACEBOOK PAGE
BY BRAND
FOUR SEASONS HOTELS AND RESORTS, Toronto
DESCRIPTION: Four Seasons launched its Facebook presence in May 2009. The corporate team trained public relations directors and social media specialists across the globe to launch their own presence on social media and create share-worthy content to engage with consumers. Facebook photo albums and applications are introduced for specific campaigns, and a tab was created to drive e-commerce efforts with the goal of nurturing deeper engagement with the Facebook community. Qualitative measures like response time, posting frequency, content structure and the development of quality imagery and media were other areas of focus.
RESULTS: In Q2 2012, fan engagement on Facebook was up 42%. Of existing Four Seasons social platforms, Facebook is the number one referral source for visits to Four Seasons websites.
RUNNER-UP: Marriott International
JUDGES’ COMMENTS: “The efforts of Four Seasons should be commended, as they have invested heavily in training local content publishers at each hotel to post relevant information while maintaining brand standards.”
BY PROPERTY
THE RITZ-CARLTON, NAPLES, Florida
DESCRIPTION: The property decided to revamp its efforts on its existing Facebook page to increase awareness of and affinity for the resort. The hotel targeted potential customers — men and women ages 35 to 65 with combined household incomes of US$150,000 living in major metropolitan areas in the Northeast, Midwest and southern Florida markets of the United States — with Facebook advertisements. It then recorded their likes and dislikes from fan interaction on the property’s Facebook page and began recognizing Facebook fans on-property. The page also featured live question-and-answer sessions with resort experts on topics including culinary, spa, fitness, healthy eating, wedding planning and event décor, as well as real-time posting of on-property photography.
RESULTS: Daily fan growth rate increased 201% from Q1 2011 to Q1 2012. The amount of daily, engaged users quadrupled from Q1 2011 to Q1 2012. Average daily organic impressions increased 178% from Q1 2011 to Q1 2012, and Facebook-referred guests delivered US$7,376 in incremental room revenue in 2011.
RUNNER-UP: The Kimberly Hotel, New York City
JUDGES’ COMMENTS: “Great example of localized knowledge that not only gives voice to the brand but also inspires people to travel.”
BEST REPUTATION MANAGEMENT
BY BRAND
STARWOOD HOTELS & RESORTS WORLDWIDE
DESCRIPTION: Starwood established a 29-member team to handle global social media activities related to its brands, hotels and loyalty program. This included monitoring and analysis, conflict resolution, service recovery and reputation management. The goal was to mitigate the risk and opportunity costs associated with not responding or recognizing guest feedback rather than a direct return on investment. The creation of the team included training and collaboration with public relations, marketing, brands and other internal teams to establish clear protocols and escalation paths.
RESULTS: Starwood’s team has had an average response time of under two hours across all major social channels and has seen a 37% increase in positive social sentiment across each of its brands and loyalty program.
RUNNER-UP: ITC Hotels, Gurgaon, India
JUDGES’ COMMENTS: “Starwood did a fabulous job of training a dedicated team to really put some thrust behind their customer engagement efforts.”
BEST FACEBOOK PROMOTION
BY BRAND
BEST WESTERN INTERNATIONAL, Phoenix, Arizona
DESCRIPTION: The “Be a Travel Hero” promotion gave Best Western Rewards members the chance to win a free family vacation. Participants selected a dream destination and a name for their trip, and began sharing that trip with their friends and family. Each “virtual vacation” could be shared via a Facebook “share” function with anyone on their Facebook friend list. These friends were then invited to join the trip and suggest an activity for the group.
RESULTS: Growth in Facebook likes created by the “Be a Travel Hero” application was 283,617. The campaign resulted in a 20% year-on-year revenue increase in Best Western reservations over the previous year’s spring promotion.
RUNNER-UP: Marriott International
JUDGES’ COMMENTS: “In general this campaign was masterful, with discipline to conduct the research and develop a cohesive point of view, ingenuity to develop the tools through Facebook to truly pay off the vision and organization to present a clear and compelling message throughout the campaign. This is what brands should be striving for, and the results show it.”
BY PROPERTY
MANDARIN ORIENTAL, HONG KONG
DESCRIPTION: To create buzz about new burger offerings at its hotel restaurant, Café Causette, the hotel offered social media followers a special US$12 offer to try a platter of five different mini-burgers and then vote on their favorite, with the two most popular burgers being added to the restaurant menu. The hotel also offered a free burger dinner prize for three Facebook fans who best answered the question, “Who would you like to enjoy the burgers with, and why?”
RESULTS: Over 520 people visited Café Causette to try the special five mini-burger platter, and the viral reach of the burger offer post was 370% higher than the average reach per post. Due to the response, three burgers instead of two were added to the menu.
RUNNER-UP: DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
JUDGES’ COMMENTS: “Nicely done — using a loyal fan base to drive awareness for a new menu item, but equally important, it allowed fans to actually have an impact on what was served at the restaurant.”
BY PROPERTY
LE MÉRIDIEN CHIANG RAI RESORT, Thailand
DESCRIPTION: The hotel instated a policy requiring its general manager to reply to all TripAdvisor comments personally and use TripAdvisor as a platform for receiving feedback with a strict response time of 48 hours for every comment — positive or negative.
RESULTS: The hotel has held the number one position on TripAdvisor out of 98 hotels in Chiang Rai since February 2011 and recently won the TripAdvisor’s 2012 Travelers’ Choice Award for the Top 25 Luxury Hotels in Thailand.
RUNNER-UP: Opus Hotel, Vancouver
JUDGES’ COMMENTS: “Their commitment to bringing their clients’ voices into their daily management meetings is stronger than most.”
BEST TWITTER ACCOUNT
BY PROPERTY
FOUR SEASONS HOTEL AUSTIN, Texas
DESCRIPTION: The hotel’s Twitter account is monitored seven days a week by the in-house social media team, which creates content such as “Concierge Recommends” showcasing events around the city, and behind-the-scenes details about the hotel. The team produces an average of six to seven tweets per day. The hotel also used the account to address concerns or complaints posted via Twitter and leave care packages to Twitter followers staying at the hotel.
RESULTS: The hotel has grown its @FSAustin followers to more than 5,000 in three years, with an 81% upsurge of 2,200 followers from January 2011 to March 2012. The account receives on average of 20 to 60 retweets per day and 10 to 40 mentions per day. It maintains a Klout score between 50 and 56 and averages nearly 125,000 weekly impressions.
RUNNER-UP: Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, Los Angeles
JUDGES’ COMMENTS:
“Listening for guests tweeting about the hotel and then leaving care packages in their room recognizing them for the mention is certainly going above and beyond.”
BY BRAND
FAIRMONT HOTELS & RESORTS, Toronto
DESCRIPTION: In addition to engaging customers and followers with content, Fairmont gives exclusive offers via its Twitter account to drive revenue such as Twitter-only rate discounts as low as C$119 (US$118) at hotels like The Fairmont Empress in Victoria, complimentary appetizers and free music downloads.
RESULTS: Discounted social media rate offers created about US$12,000 in revenue from bookings and added 8,000 new followers in response to the offer.
RUNNER-UP: ITC Hotels, Gurgaon, India
JUDGES’ COMMENTS: “The brand is doing a good job engaging customers with transactional offers.”
BEST TWITTER PROMOTION
BY BRAND
BEST WESTERN INTERNATIONAL, Phoenix, Arizona
DESCRIPTION: Best Western hoped to grow its Twitter following by 2,000 and increase engagement levels by sparking travel conversation among friends. “Wanna Go, Wanna Bring” was designed to be an organically shared Twitter promotion that would allow followers to tell friends where they wanted to go on a trip, who they wanted to go with and what they wanted to do after arriving. Participants would tweet the answers to these questions using the promotion’s hashtag, #wannagobw, so other Twitter users would see a common link and join in.
RESULTS: Over 18,000 tweets were written with the #wannagobw hashtag. Best Western’s Twitter following also grew from 14,000 to over 17,000 in less than a month, exceeding its goal. Engagement levels increased to the highest levels to date.
RUNNER-UP: Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Toronto
JUDGES’ COMMENTS: “Great incorporation of a travel promotion to capture existing demand with a brand-strengthening contest.”
BY PROPERTY
MARQUIS LOS CABOS, Mexico
DESCRIPTION: The hotel initiated an international tweetup event for Travelers’ Night In (#TNI), which is a Tweetchat of travel experts and avid travelers to create a buzz about the resort and mitigate negative headlines about travel in Mexico. The event was themed as a “Mini-Indulgences” remote #TNI weekend at Marquis Los Cabos, and top Twitter influencers with large followings were invited to give the event maximum credibility. The hotels also secured other luxury brands — such as Hartmann Luggage, Luxury Avenue Los Cabos and Virgin America — as co-sponsors to contribute to added chat content. The hotel formulated 10 #TNI questions for tweeting to travelers around the globe, including asking what their favorite hotel amenity is, the most impressive hotel service and fantasy travel experiences. It also steered #TNI discussions around the topic that Mexico is a safe and family-friendly vacation.
RESULTS: With a budget of US$3,500 for the promotion, the event saw more than 14 million impressions that corresponded to more than 1.4 million unique impressions. Close to 4,500 tweets were sent during the 90-minute event.
JUDGES’ COMMENTS: “Stellar creativity and commitment to this campaign. Just about perfect.”
BEST USE OF DIGITAL VIDEO
BY BRAND
ITC HOTELS, Gurgaon, India
DESCRIPTION: ITC Hotels introduced a video blog where original videos were filmed and published expressly for the ITC Hotels Lifestyle and Travel blog — WelcomZest Lounge. The videos were craft ed to capture the cuisines, moods and ingredients used by the chefs at ITC Hotels, to engage food connoisseurs and generate awareness about ITC Hotels’ food and beverage offerings. Each chef’s table video was supported with a blog post with details on the food prepared as well as an exclusive recipe and preparation specifications of the dish being showcased.
RESULTS: Videos were uploaded to YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. Over 1,300 views on YouTube and numerous comments were received.
JUDGES’ COMMENTS: “Video can be tricky as it can come across very amateur, but ITC did a good job of creating high-quality content.”
BY PROPERTY
TRUMP INTERNATIONAL BEACH RESORT – MIAMI, Sunny Isles Beach, Florida
DESCRIPTION: The hotel decided to expand its digital media beyond property tours and began actively listening to guests to create videos that responded to guests’ most favorable experiences, providing insights on how to duplicate them in their own homes.
RESULTS: The property uploaded the content to YouTube and shared the content across social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. It typically produced one video a month, which averaged 600 views.
JUDGES’ COMMENTS: “Good, engaging videos to provide tips to the viewer.”
BEST USE OF FOURSQUARE
BY BRAND
STARWOOD HOTELS & RESORTS WORLDWIDE
DESCRIPTION: Starwood’s loyalty program, Starwood Preferred Guest, targeted global frequent travelers with a Foursquare integration program to drive enrollment and awareness. Starwood created a site where members could link their loyalty program and Foursquare accounts to facilitate rewarding designated check-in behaviors on Foursquare check-ins.
RESULTS: Starwood gained 8,000 new Foursquare followers as a result of the campaign, and monthly Foursquare check-ins across all hotels rose 92%.
RUNNER-UP: The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co., Chevy Chase, Maryland
JUDGES’ COMMENTS: “This is an example of a brand showing vision and accomplishing something that 99.9% of hotels simply couldn’t pull off .”
BEST USE OF EMERGING PLATFORMS
BY BRAND
THOMPSON HOTELS, New York City
DESCRIPTION: After noting that photos created the highest levels of engagement on the brand’s Facebook and Twitter pages, Thompson started utilizing Instagram in June 2011. Starting from zero, it aimed to gain an initial 700 users (100 per month) and generate an average engagement of 30 likes per post by the end of 2011. It did so by giving followers intimate looks at Thompson properties with creative photography of hotel-centered content and integrating Instagram content with its Facebook and Twitter accounts.
RESULTS: Thompson exceeded its goal by acquiring 1,018 Instagram followers by the end of 2011, hit an average of 31 likes per photo with comments increasing 71% from July to December 2011, and received media coverage from HotelChatter.com.
RUNNER-UP: Marriott International
JUDGES’ COMMENTS: “The quality and consistency of the imagery is fantastic.”
BY PROPERTY
FOUR SEASONS HOTEL AUSTIN, Texas
DESCRIPTION: In January 2012 the hotel established itself on Pinterest. Its in-house marketing team eschewed directly promoting the hotel and instead made a goal of establishing Four Seasons Hotel Austin as a resource for Pinterest users on topics like Austin, weddings, cuisine and luxury travel.
RESULTS: The hotel’s Pinterest account garnered over 300 followers, with the hotel’s most popular boards — Quintessential Austin, Bucket List Adventures and 2012 Wedding Trends — each boasting over 600 followers. Since January, the hotel’s pins have been re-pinned more than 900 times. No ROI in terms of increased hotel reservations or wedding bookings were quantified, but the hotel can verify one Four Seasons bride who is planning her wedding with inspiration from the hotel’s “Say I Do” and “2012 Wedding Trends” Pinterest boards.
RUNNER-UP: Sheraton Bratislava Hotel, Slovakia
JUDGES’ COMMENTS: “There are several quality topic boards that are being displayed, providing topics that will appeal to many.”
SOCIAL HOTEL AWARDS JUDGES
David Pavelko, head of travel, Google Inc., New York City
Henry Harteveldt, co-founder, Atmosphere Research Group, San Francisco
Amy Jo Martin, founder, Digital Royalty, Phoenix
Burns Patterson, COO, Middleton & Gendron, New York City
Chris Jackson, president, GCommerce, Park City, Utah
The staff editors at HOTELS Magazine
