Social networks trends impact the hospitality industry

Up to February 2022, mobile users worldwide have reached 7.26 billion users, accounting for 91.62% of the world population. 4.15 billion are currently active on their social networks with an average usage of 145 minutes per day. The high usage tendency has proven its impact on travelers’ decisions through the social network, setting itself as a new influential trend in the hospitality industry. Hotels have been adjusting their management to take advantage of this social trend by promoting their marketing campaign. Then, where to start and how to grow your audiences on social media to effectively boost your hotel’s revenue?

The growth of social trends in hospitality is invincible, driving sales and revenues like never before

Connecting people through social network channels

According to the Digital 2021 October Global Statshot Report done by We Are Social and Hootsuite, the social network users have gained 400 million users, which is equivalent to 9.9% growth in the last 12 months to exceed 4.55 billion users in October 2021. In Vietnam, there were 68.72 million Internet users national wide, making up for 73.7% of the nation’s population who have been frequently active on their social networks.

Blogs, pictures, and short clips on travels have been favored and shared proactively over any other materials found on Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, Twitter, Youtube with recorded views daily. The keyword safe travel becomes a popular trending keyword, receiving a decent high search volume over the past year due to COVID-19 pandemic impacts. Taking the social networks in the right direction and setting goals dedicated to hotels’ marketing campaigns in order to approach the potential target audiences naturally, connecting their customers with their brand on an emotional level, building the brand awareness that they trust, love, and believe can ever be easier.

The millennials are constantly online to feel mentally connected with others. If hotels know how to approach them through social media networks correctly can win their trust and loyalty.

The power of hashtags

The hashtag is a metadata tag prefaced by the hash symbol #, which is used as a filter system to categorize and arrange related post content accordingly to the user-generated tagging system. Taking advantage of this feature, it is suggested that hotels should consider including hashtags in each social media post while encouraging guests to share the hotels’ hashtag in their personal posts every time they mention the products/services/experiences at the hotel. This is particularly useful to increase your brand awareness. For instant, your hotel starts out with the obvious hashtags to promote your brands, such as #CiHMS, #hospitalitymanagementsolutionCiHMS, or #CiHMShospitalitydigitaltransformationsolution. Once you generate an adequate number of posts with the above hashtags, your hashtags will surely show up when users start typing related hashtags to yours, such as #hospitalitymanagementsolution, the hashtag #hospitalitymanagementsolutionCiHMS definitely shall be suggested to the users on the search box autocomplete dropdown.

Promoting the hashtags among your customers can be easily implemented with genuine marketing or promotional campaigns. Ask them to share their stays, experiences, their favorite place/ services about the hotels with the hashtags to receive added value services in return such as spa vouchers, free room upgrade, free lounge access, etc. These campaigns help approach various customers segments that would be interested in your hotels. Making these hashtags consistent across the social media channels would be a big plus inputting your hotels on the map, becoming searchable, and showing your brand’s authenticity, a personality that your customers can actually relate to.

Be consistent with your hashtags to maximize their effectiveness

Aligning your brand with a social cause campaign

Competition has always been challenging for any business, especially in the hospitality industry amidst this recovery transition phase post-pandemic. To stand out and gain competitive advantages, many hotels strive big, support building a good cause campaign for the community. The one that’s well thought out will eventually help to drive brand awareness, gain customers’ affections and loyalty toward the brand. A social cause campaign also improves brands’ interactions with customers, brings in followers and subscribers that share the same interests with your business. A successful and effective social cause campaign ultimately helps generate leads and boost your brand’s conversion rate spectacularly.

Influencer marketing on social media

Influencer marketing is also a form of word-of-mouth but takes place on the social network platform. If in the past, breaking news usually only spread in a small area of your town through your chatty neighbors, thanks to social media, the news can travel at a much faster speed throughout your city or nation, depending on your initiatives.

Although it is controversial, undeniably influencer marketing is remarkably effective. Social influencers have gained exponential credibility, authority, and potential in reaching a large audience for a short period of time. The influencer can promote not only your products and services but also your brand identity. Consider collaborating with a travel blogger, who is willing to share their real experiences at your properties: personalized hotel room tour, in-room services, dine-in menus, the foods and drinks quality reviews, the current events that are happening within the hotel and the surrounding neighborhood.

Furthermore, these influencers – Youtubers, Tiktokers, and KOLs have actively had their own unique followers base, the majorities are the millennials and Gen Z, the biggest two customers segments in tourism and hospitality at the moment. If you decide to go with high engagement rate influencers, you’ll be sure to reach the individuals following that given influencer non-intrusively. It allows the customers to perceive hotel experiences from a personal and interactive approach, breaking the traditional hotel marketing strategy and empowering to influence your target customers’ travel decisions.

The appropriate campaign and the right influencers deliver many drastic economic benefits to businesses.

The takeaways from influences marketing

• Draw qualified leads from the influencers’ followers base, the quick buzz for your brand identity, get people to dive deeper into the actual services and products your hotel is providing.
• Pick your influencers wisely, as their impression affects your hotel brand’s image and credibility.
• The safe attempt at crowd effect generating from influencers marketing to shape your brand marketing campaign.

The holdbacks of influencers marketing

• The unexpected scandalous issue that happens with your influencers during the campaign might hurt your brand’s image deeply, some have faced serious boycotts against hotel brands.
• Always double check your influencers’ statistics, look at their followers’ audience to determine whether or not it fits your brand target audiences, or face the waste of ineffective campaign setup.
• Collaborating with a number of influencers to create diversification in content, reaches out to a much bigger base of followers instead of sticking to only one influencer with the repeated content style might end up boring your audience.
• It’s indeed a risky marketing strategy with a big budget.
• Hence, using influencer marketing methodology effectively, hotels have to be selective in choosing credible influencers, leverage on the prospective customers, the economic returns, competitive advantages that come with the campaign. In any circumstances, being legally binding among parties is extremely important to eliminate any possible risks, ensure quality delivery and commitment from the influencers.

Hence, using influencer marketing methodology effectively, hotels have to be selective in choosing credible influencers, leverage on the prospective customers, the economic returns, competitive advantages that come with the campaign. In any circumstances, being legally binding among parties is extremely important to eliminate any possible risks, ensure quality delivery and commitment from the influencers.

Social trends have crept their way into hospitality to drive constant growth, changes, and impacts on the way hotels innovate their brands and gain the customers’ trust and loyalty. This digital strategic shift opens plenty of opportunities for hospitality to expand its customer base when it’s done right. Occasionally, CiHMS also came across our customers regarding the current social trends and how to get everything started properly. Improving your guests’ experiences, optimizing tel operations efficiently with powerful and cutting-edge technology is definitely vital, worth investing in, and our All-in-one cloud-based hospitality management solution – CiHMS have all your backs.