SPECIAL REPORT : SOCIAL MEDIA
Orient-Express uses Facebook to showcase the natural beauty of its properties .
TRENDING : TECH
DRIVING REVENUE ON FACEBOOK
Facebook is developing new features hotels can use to measure their impact and book rooms while hotel companies are developing direct booking widgets .
NEW FEATURES : Facebook has developed two new features for fan pages , Insights and Offers . With Insights , user-response data points appear after a post hits the fan page news feed . Administrators can enable their fans to send private messages to the company ; the company can , in turn , respond privately , which is a new vehicle of customer service . Offers is a free new way for businesses to share discounts and promos from fan pages that can be distributed through the news feed or promoted as sponsored stories . “ Consumers want travel planning to be easy . The best practice is to make it that way by making it easy for people to have direction on a hotel page to where they can book a room ,” says Facebook spokeswoman Victoria Cassady .
BOOKING : Marriott , Mandarin Oriental , Rezidor and Shangri-La International Hotel Management , Hong Kong , have already installed direct booking widgets . Four Seasons and Hyatt plan to introduce widgets on their pages in 2012 .
WHAT TO MAKE OF GOOGLE +
Hotel companies are starting to establish presences on the nascent social network Google +, which has more than 90 million users since its launch in June 2011 .
WHY USE IT : The site offers businesses the chance to create pages similar to the Facebook fan page that regular users can follow . “ There are lots of great features that hotel companies can use ,” says Andrea Faville , manager of global communications and public affairs at Google . “ Hangouts are a great way to connect to customers face-to-face . You could give virtual tours of a new property and post images . It ’ s also a great platform for hotels to poll their audience or crowd-source information from their followers .”
ON IT : Four Seasons and Mandarin Oriental are already active on Google +, but their followings there are substantially smaller than on Facebook or Twitter .
GETTING ON IT : Hyatt says it is currently working on a Google + page . Shangri-La seems interested . “ We are closely watching the developments for this platform and could be working out specific strategies for Google + in the future ,” says Michael Leong , director of digital marketing at Shangri-La .
www . hotelsmag . com April 2012 HOTELS 27