Rooms? Spa? Restaurants? Service? View? Pool?
You can probably guess the answer just by looking at your own posts. Some may say I’m biased but take a look at this survey (source: localmeasure.com) that I recently found in my archives. It compiles information from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram from guests staying at close to 300 hotels in North America, Australia and Asia over a two-month period.
According to the survey, the top five hotel experiences that guests talk about on social media are :
With the current travel restrictions, the study may appear slightly outdated, but it does confirm a couple of points to reflect on:
F&B generates the highest feedback on social media. F&B also supports the main communication outreach of a hotel, it is the backbone when it comes to content, news or images and, importantly, it is updated in real time during a guest’s stay.
F&B — by default — always delivers the most accurate and up-to-date information about a hotel’s offer and activities. Unlike rooms or spa, F&B does benefit from the seasonality of the products: the latest vintage, a new cocktail list or menu, an innovative service ritual, the arrival of a new colleague, a seasonal animation from a Swiss chalet in winter to a BBQ in the summer. In addition, these news-generating initiatives or offers mostly require far less investment than refurbishing an entire room or building a new swimming pool!
The stats should encourage our hotels to invest dedicated money for F&B social media; not necessarily a simple budget allocation based on a “profitability breakdown” between rooms and F&B. On top of user-generated content, investing in your own social media channels is logical as it requires you to be clear about your own purpose and message(s); to develop a real style and philosophy when using pictures (an entire post on that one soon… ); to consider dedicated channels of communications (potentially also different ones from the general hotel channels); to create appealing copy; and to encourage the F&B team to develop initiatives and news for social media.