MIAMI—It can be a little bit harder for independent hotels to make some noise on social media, compared to branded properties with a lot of loyalty members. Of course, social media also provides a hotel with the opportunity to directly engage with guests and build its own loyalty.
EuroSuites Hotel, located here, struggled with its social media strategy precisely because it’s an independent hotel. Barbara Safina, Eurosuites’ marketing agent, said, “Thus, we do not have the support of bigger brands that manage chain hotels. We had to start with a very small database and promote our channels through special activities like contests, Q&As and trivia.”
Safina noted that a lack of strategy in social media’s early years was also a problem. “Even though the hotel had public profiles four years ago on Facebook and Twitter, they were not managed based on performance. It was very hard to measure our strategies if we didn’t know if they were or weren’t working,” she said.
With a prototypical guest between the ages of 25 and 45, Safina noted that the hotel’s guests are tech savvy. “A huge percentage of our clientele are from Latin America, where social media has grown significantly in the past years,” she added.
To implement a better social media strategy, the hotel utilized tools from SumAll Insights. “We were looking for a platform that translated our daily activities and helped us interpret the data. Moreover, we needed to understand our followers—what did they like, how did they get information, what type of information they cared about,” said Safina, who praised how detailed the reports she receives are. “These reports provide you with the information you need to understand: the type of content you should be posting; at what time you should post; the hashtags, length and attachments that are more effective for your followers; who your followers are following; and much more,” she said. “Every point of data gives you a sense of understanding.”
These reports have completely altered the hotel’s approach to social media. Safina offered examples. “We are posting events, activities and recommendations in the area instead of services and events in the hotel, as we were during before,” she said. “We are now posting at later times of the day; even if we are active throughout the day, our relevant content will be posted after 5 p.m. We also identify a time block between noon and 2 p.m., where our followers are really active and searching for information.”
Additionally, the hotel realized that, with social media, less is sometimes more. “We stopped posting too much, and focused on posting information worth reading that invited our followers to interact with us, to share, like and comment,” she said. For instance, in the first week of June, the SumAll overview report showed that the hotel’s twitter account (@Eurosuites) posted 52 pieces of content where 34 users interacted with the posts, 848 users potentially saw the posts and four new followers were earned. By comparison, in the first week of September, the hotel only posted 31 times (40% less content), but interacted with 46 users, 32,000 users potentially saw the posts and 15 new followers were earned.
“We also realized that sharing internal content with emotional memories would significantly increase the interaction,” said Safina. “Our followers identify themselves with the hotel staff when we post these types of content, including birthdays, gatherings, celebrations, meetings and special occasions. Because we are a small hotel, the majority of our staff has been working at this property since its beginning, and everybody gets to know and interact with our staff when they get to the hotel. To be more specific, the piece of content that had the greatest interaction on Facebook during September was a birthday post for Alex, our sales & customer service manager.”
In addition, the property also recently launched an Instagram account. “Social media has become a very important aspect for our company in the last two years,” said Safina. “Having the availability to offer our clients easy-to-find information, fast responses and a closer communication through images and videos on social media has helped us position ourselves as a small boutique hotel that cares about every single client.”
—Nicole Carlino