The Power of Starting with a Blank Slate
During the past month, I’ve let my mind run wild with ideas on how, starting from a blank slate, a business such as a boutique hotel could use social media, not just as an attachment to their services, but embed it directly into their DNA. What has quickly become the most important factor in all of this thinking is not, counter intuitively:
1. The freedom of working with a large budget
2. The ability to brainstorm, plan and implement due to a longer timeline
3. The content the hotel’s staff will be able to generate
4. The services that a hotel with a dining, retail, spa and nightlife offer
The most important factor of my brainstorming and thinking about the “New Social Hotel” is that fact that I can start from the ground up.
Up to now, I’ve been working with existing businesses, so that for the most part, my work has been about integrating social media into a marketing and communications schema that was created before I joined the team. At first I thought it was not ideal because it meant that I would have to be briefed on all previous efforts and decisions in order not to step on toes, rehash old debates etc.
Actually, having an existing framework provides structure to social media marketing, giving it boundaries and clues on how to best proceed and integrate with the more traditional messaging. Having structure with something as new and experimental as social media is a huge positive, couching experimentation and new vocabulary in a familiar setting. It is more limiting, which is why I am incredibly excited about letting loose with a tabula rosa.
The Power of an Idea
The idea I am referring to is the one I have spent months developing and it is the central thesis of my work as a social media strategist for the hospitality business. That thesis, roughly paraphrased, is that the hospitality business is uniquely suited to capitalizing on the emerging power of social media. That is because restaurants, bars, music venues, comedy clubs, hotels, spas, and other institutions are some of the ONLY remaining places that we go offline to enjoy ourselves, to spend time with loved ones and family. In an increasingly online world, the places we patronize offline have an incredible obligation and responsibility to craft and execute a coherent and effective social media marketing strategy.
What Does A Social Media Hotel Look Like?
Let’s imagine for a moment a new resort hotel that we can build from the ground up, where we are free to embed social media tools, instruments and philosophies directly into the DNA of that establishment.
1. How about an branded iPhone App?
Imagine walking into a hotel and checking in. The concierge comes over to welcome you and informs you that when you check into your room, the first thing you’ll see is a new Apple Tablet waiting by the bedside. And when you load that iPad up, it will have a branded application for the hotel giving you a run down of all the services available in that hotel, an introduction to the neighborhood as well as options to make reservations at the restaurant in the hotel, book spa services, reserve a table in the nightclub.
Imagine being able to download a free application to your iPhone and Android-powered device complete with all the above services as well as podcast tours of the hotel as well as the neighborhood? Plug in your headphones and go for a stroll with the concierge staff aurally directing your attention to nearby attractions. What are the good restaurants in the area? Art galleries? Shopping? Any comedy clubs or bars of note?
Imagine having all that at the touch of a button, in your pocket. When you got home, would you show it around to your friends? Would you be impressed with that?
2. Hotel as Curator
What other services could a hotel provide via social media? It makes sense that a business with as many services and attractions as a hotel serve as a HUB. What do I mean by Hub? A hotel should be an influential voice in the social media space in the world that they are in. If its a luxury spa hotel than they should be a strong and active member of that community. They should share and link to relevant news stories and articles in their market space. They should maintain a blog where they produce original content, about the hotel, the brand, the people who work there, the mission but also use the blog as a forum and online meeting space where the community can participate.
I would love to see a resort hotel’s Twitter and Facebook accounts as influential voices not only for their own services and content, but actively curating the best stories, deals, news and trends in the travel and leisure industry. That would be incredibly powerful. And would be a great marketing technique to boot.
3. Meeting Place
A hotel should use it services and venue to enhance and build up the community, both physical and virtual. Hosting occasional tweet ups and enfranchising the vanguard of the social media community will bring it back a healthy return. Have doubts? Just Google “Roger Smith Hotel.”
4. Location Aware
Any hotel needs to be location aware. What that means is they’ll need to integrate technology, such as the smart phone application I mentioned above, with location aware abilities. Services like Foursquare have open API’s; and a truly social hotel will need to integrate that service into their offerings. If I check-in the to hotel, they should know about it, and with total integration they can find out who I am, what I do, what I look like, and what I like to do (all based on Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare check-in data, which they will then have access to). Having that data allows a business to target me specifically. Notice that I like to do yoga? Why not offer me a discounted Yoga package with a handwritten note from the spa? See that I enjoy Italian food, the concierge could offer to make a reservation at the best Italian restaurant in the neighborhood, or offer to have food delivered to my hotel room.
The new hotel is sure to be a social hotel. The one that, if we so choose, will be as open, transparent and socially aware as any other business we might patronize. As a “social” place to begin with, hotels that experiment with using social, online technologies and approaches to their offerings and services will create wonderful opportunities for themselves.
Image Source: SuperMac 1961 on Flickr
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Not watching the Golden Globes on TV so I DID read ur new blog post. And I like what I read. Love seeing your creativity in action, Zac. Hotel as HUB is such an obvious and yet I don’t think I have ever quite experienced it the way you are describing it could be. I love it! Even for well traveled clients, it would take a lot of insecurity out of a vacation (or business layover) without following anyone’s schedule but your own. I am betting that you are just about to revolutionize the hospitality industry in all sorts of ways.
Silvana Vukadin-Hoitt´s last blog ..The Diodato Family Bed and Breakfast in Val d Orcia
YAP this works but I really wanted to read Twitter is all fucked up It’s like ‘Pimp my ride’ all over again WHO in the fuck is Pleasure Ellis?? a Black dude butthair, IT is all Hacked and it’s not the IRAN cyber army this time
Don’t know about pleasure Ellis.
OK jus lay low You Obviously Don’t have security clearance IT is a sign or not so subtle hint sorry things are going this way but computers and the judgment is like a child w/o a Parent but IT drives either a GTO or an M1A1 Abrahms Tank, I think tonight it’s the Mclairan F! custom build all out Bling and HP. Don’t exactly know what to do but IT is wrong and IT needs to understand like a child does.
Interesting and inspiring yet I need to question the ability of carring out such a program when you have never (self admittedly) worked in hospitality. I have spent 31 years in restaurants and hotels and that is the differenciating factor in what I have coined “Social Hospitality” I will not try to do work for a shoe store, a pharma co., or pretend that I can run social for a tech firm. What I do know is I come from the most elite properties in the world including The Plaza. Social media is just a tool to exploit the skills, experience and knowledge of industries that you already have a deep grasp of. It is not a magic pill.
I would be very weary of someone outside of the hospitality industry trying to re-invent it through social. Hospitality is one of the oldest industries in the world.
I only suggest leaving it to those that have been in it’s trenches.
Brian, appreciate your comment. Considering I am now consulting for a variety of properties in the hospitality sector, I hope you’ll take my blog post as just ideas I’d like to see implemented. Also, I would highly recommend criticizing the ideas in the piece rather than their author. Otherwise it just sounds as though you live in an ivory tower and that only elite career hospitality guys like yourself should bother with such things. We’ve met in person and I respect tremendously the job you’ve done at RS Hotel. In many ways, the Roger Smith is a shining example of what can be done. But it is far from an elite hotel. Since you’ve decided to criticize me personally, why would you go from a place like the plaza to a middling hotel such as the Roger Smith?
I simply believe in the power of good ideas to transform things, businesses included. Any of these ideas you disagree with?
This is why social rocks! Conversation solves all! I am far from an ivory tower but the reason, since you ask, that I left The Plaza for RSH is after surviving 7 months of chemo (3-6 hrs a day 3 days a week) I realized the plaza was fundamentally a joke. Hospitality is not about the FF&E it’s about the people. I CARE about the peoe of the industry and so does the ownership of RSH. We have a little motto. People, Stories, Bottom Line. It’s not based on being “elite” it’s based on being human. Thank you for the compliments on our teams efforts. My point is that coming up with ideas is easy… Execution of them is extremely difficult. To execute in the hospitality industry you truly need a deep understanding of the industry. I think what you do is great. I just want people to comprehend this is a massive undertaking. From unions to internal culture shifts – it is multi-level politically challenging stuff. We (you and those of us in ‘social’) get it.. Industry vets that have been bus boys since the Vietnam war are not as easy to convince – and trust me they will not change without leadership that can 100% relate to them.
We (you, me and others in this space) are all striving for and hoping for the same outcome. Your post just made it seem easier than it actually is.
Thank you so much for the post and follow up!
I am sure I will see you soon.
well dont i feel like an ass. Brian, I am sorry for that experience with the Plaza. And I am happy to hear you are well. I hope your good health continues.
Look you are absolutely right that there are so many factors to consider with the moves I am talking about.
Hopefully I’ll be given the chance to activate even 10pct of them. I look forward to with a new hotel client in NYC. It will be interesting for sure. Perhaps I’ll go down in flames!
But here is the thing, which I KNOW you “get,” and that is that businesses in the hospitality sector have a unique responsibility to square the online and offline aspects of social. Hotels, restaurants, comedy clubs, bars, coffee shops, resorts, spas. These are some of the last places we go to either be alone or to spend time with the people we love, our friends and family. And that experience can be made better through effect social media engagement.
You are a true pioneer and one that has, and will, continue to inspire me as I learn more, and make better mistakes!
Z