Presentation of an OTA

Analyzing An Online Travel Agency

Hotels and social media on the Internet

A recent article published on November 17th 2009 on the website Hotelmarketing.com caught my attention on the internet social media. It lists the reasons why hoteliers should further capitalize on them. Two of them were particularly insightful. The article says that the social media are a new marketing channel. What I find interesting for the hospitality industry is the fact that hotels no longer need to systematically implement an expensive internet-based advertising campaign since these social media are highly efficient and cheap. Their reach is endless because their marketing channels are many: sharing photos and videos on dedicated websites, unveiling updates, promotions and news on others... the possibilities are infinite. I consider the notion of the so-called “viralability” as a key concept too. The idea is to be visible on these social media in order to virally spread over the net: some hotels generated great revenues on Facebook for example. I increasingly see Facebook, Twitter or Youtube icons on web pages to encourage social media users to refer about these pages among their social internet communities. My opinion is that the internet social media have yet to achieve their peak so this article confirms the huge marketing opportunity that lies behind them.

http://www.hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/the_time_for_hotels_to_get_involved_with_social_media_is_now/