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A holistic plan for social media is a necessary implemented strategy in 21st century hospitality operations. From creating direct bookings to guest and customer engagement, there is general agreement that social media is effective and profit-inducing.

The importance of social media is not set to wain in the future. Currently, approximately one-third of the planet has at least one social media account and we spend an average of nearly two hours each day surfing the internet on the low end (Michopoulou & Moisa, 2019) and on the high end Brenner (2019) identified 4.6 billion (approx. 60%) of people on earth have social media accounts.

Social media users trend toward a younger audience and our global population is growing, implying the future will have more social media users than less.

The importance of social media is not new in the lodging industry. An important question asked in hospitality company board rooms in the early days of social media concerned the ROI of social media activity. Specifically, social media campaigns cost money. What is the ROI of social media? How much money should be budgeted for social media in order to maximize the ROI and overall effectiveness of the social media strategy?

It seems to me that approximately half of all social media ROI studies conclude that identifying ROI is not possible while half attempt to create, and re-create, formulas for deciphering ROI. Yet, even the best formulas are problematic because technology in the social media space is moving quickly. And some social media ROI formulas are so complex that companies cannot realistically employ them (e.g., Berkowitz in 2009 created an ROI of social media equation that had approximately 120 data points).

Some generally agreed upon guidance was identified by social media professionals. This generally agreed upon formula from their field reads:

(Profit / Investment) * 100 = Social Media ROI

Problematically, this formula was created, forwarded, and leveraged by social media marketing professionals. These individuals are biased toward the influence of social media. Furthermore, this was a general formula for businesses and not a lodging-specific metric. Most lodging professionals I worked with realized this was a faulty formula. From realizing the bias toward social media to noting the difference between engagement and loyalty, the formula is not conducive to the hotel industry.

One day in particular I was visiting Fairmont's corporate offices in Toronto. This was 2012. I brought approximately 25 students to learn how lodging corporate offices operated. The CEO, William Fatt, invited us into a meeting that was focused on the ROI of social media. While it would not be right to recount meeting particulars, I can say that I was captured by the topic. The students were as well. The highest echelons of our hospitality industry were spending resources attempting to identify social media best practices and ROI specifically.

The focus on social media has not waned. Yet, a formulaic approach has not been identified. Further compounding social media presence is our collective emergence from COVID-19. Our clientele have changed and are interacting with our industry in new ways. From social media influencers to the growth of traveling with pets, from generational attributes to market segments, how to reach consumers and convert their interest in your product into sales is difficult. And not formulaic industry-wide.

I cannot provide a formula to implement at your property for the ROI of social media. This is mostly because I do not believe such a formula exists. Each property is unique. Yet, I can provide you a list of things you should account for when choosing a social media strategy. If you want to maximize your ROI, you are unlikely to do so with traditional metrics. But you can still take a wise approach to social media decisions so as to maximize your ROI.

There are some primary trends in social media that hoteliers should be aware of. This includes active vs passive strategies, data (database building and data ownership), full-time social media jobs, analytics (i.e., what defines success?), and futurology of social media in the lodging industry. These five points of emphasis are explained below.

Active vs Passive Social Media

An active social media strategy implies the content for social media sites is being created in-house. A passive social media strategy implies the organization is allowing users to create the content. In the lodging industry it is important to provide your own media (i.e., an active social media strategy). This is an unchallenged fact since we want to manage our own message. There is a caveat though.

Organizations that create their own content on platforms that are not social media affiliates are considered passive social media strategies. This is a trend in organizations that create their own content, from tech organizations such as Apple or Facebook to media empires such as the New York Times or Washington Post (Odden, 2022). This type of passive social media strategy is cheaper, builds trustworthiness into the organization's messaging, and builds a stronger brand community.

Odden (2022, para. 9) wrote of visitors to one's social media site, "Readers are given an easy way to bookmark content to be revisited later or to share it with friends on a social network. At the same time, the web site has a community of enthusiasts generating links 24/7." This is technically a passive social media strategy that can lead to superior outcomes. Odden (2022) recommends having an active social media strategy as well – but this emerging passive social media strategy has not been used in the lodging industry yet and there is a first mover advantage available. No major hotel industry player has begun self-publishing media effectively yet.

Data: Databases and Data Ownership

Social media organizations such as Twitter, Tik Tok, or Meta (i.e., Facebook, Instagram) have troves of user information. This data is not accessible to lodging organizations. Yes, we can purchase some of this data to market on their platforms. But we cannot actually access this raw data ourselves.

We can build our own databases of user data. Most organizations are doing this in some fashion in 2022. Yet, we are not nearly as effective as tech organizations with a social media platform.

There is no simple solution. We can build our own platforms, survey our social media followers, continue letting social media companies make the decisions for us, or something else. What we do know is that the status quo is expensive for hoteliers. The status quo includes us leveraging social media for marketing and little else. Yes, we can accept customer complaints in a public forum on our Yelp or Facebook sites, but that is more negative than positive for us.

Social Media Manager as a Job Posting

Many companies hire social media managers at the corporate level. Social media managers at corporate office locations normally oversee global or national social media strategies. At the property or regional level, there are rarely social media managers outside of a small number of convention or resort properties. This means the brand community social media exists for is likely not being effectively crafted.

As one example, one social media manager I spoke with in 2019 told me they oversaw a social media strategy at the corporate level for their city. They were proud to be city-oriented and based in a corporate office in that city. I asked more questions though. This individual did in fact manage social media for the company in that city. They oversaw the social media strategy for the Caribbean countries in North America and the entire continent of Africa as well though. Based on the discussion, I would approximate that 80% of their time was spent on one city with the Caribbean countries in North America and 54 countries in Africa overlooked.

Granted, the company did not have a property in a majority of the countries overlooked. But customers are in these locations! Furthermore, he knew little of the continent of Africa. When the social media manager cannot name the countries they are responsible for – and has never been to the continent – there will certainly be shortcomings in the ability to build a brand community through social media.

Social media can and should be more than posting pictures or opening additional avenues of communication with your customers. It lends itself to brand community creation. Social media manager positions exist in many industries, but rarely in lodging and certainly not at the property level. A "very small minority" of social media management is done by people who have it as a primary part of their job (Michopoulou & Moisa, 2019). The future is to hire individuals to oversee smaller geographic areas and for these individuals to focus on social media rather than have it a secondary part of a more traditional hotel industry role.

Analytics: Defining Success

Success in the hotel industry is traditionally quantitatively oriented. For example, flow through, GOPPAR, ADR and RevPAR, and occupancy are all numbers that can be calculated and are historically important and mainstream. Hoteliers are continuing to make attempts to define social media success numerically. Many believe they have succeeded in calculating the ROI of social media. Yet, the formulas do not work industry-wide, formulas being used differ from each other greatly, and their usefulness wains in the fast-moving social media industry. Even which sites held which levels of importance has changed annually. Do you remember MySpace? Or when Snapchat was far more important than Tik Tok? Or when Parlor was the future of social media according to 35% of the public in the USA when the COVID-19 pandemic began?

The trend is to evaluate social media successes qualitatively. Hoot Suite (2019) identified qualitative indicators of success in social media including: engagements of certain types on different pages (e.g., brand page, specific platforms), nature of comments, disgruntled feedback, or new customer enrollment in frequent stay programs. While this is technically qualitative, it is still measurable. Software such as NVivo or Diction can assess your social media successes numerically. I believe we would be better to leverage something called naturalism in our qualitative approaches to understanding social media.

Quantitative measures seek to identify facts. If you are like me, then you do not believe we can measure social media successes factually as we can things such as occupancy or revenue. Naturalism is an approach to indicators of success that is truly qualitative. The purpose is to understand a phenomena, not to identify a fact of the phenomena. We can collect qualitative data by speaking to our social media users and identifying themes. These themes are what we use to gauge our successes. We can use these themes to build surveys and better connect with our customers. I believe social media assessment should be assessed qualitatively in the future.

Futurology of Social Media in Lodging

Futurology is the scientific study of the future. Relying on trends lines, the future of social media in the lodging industry can likely be best understood in these ways: growth, mobile, new features, visual, and geo-social (Brenner, 2021).

Social media will continue to grow. These trend lines seem fairly obvious, as younger people are more likely to have social media accounts, the global population continues to grow, and internet accessibility continues to be available to more people in emerging markets. Hoteliers need to be active on social media.

Secondly, mobile is a trend. Historically people accessed the internet from a desktop computer. Mobile is growing consistently though. Mobile was 61% of internet sites accessed in 2020, up from 57% in 2019 (Enge, 2021). 4% of market share was gained by mobile vs desktops during a pandemic when we were at home! Realize this and instill best practices for mobile, rather than solely desktops, moving forward.

Third, the purpose of social media in its inception was to connect with people from your past and to stay in touch now and into the future with those in your present (Brenner, 2021). Social media now exists primarily to present a representation of a person or a company, brand, or product (Brenner, 2021). As people get more used to social media as a marketing tool, your organization will have new opportunities.

Fourth, social media is moving to more visual mediums. For example, Facebook is giving away market share to Instagram, Tik Tok, Snapchat, and Pinterest (Brenner, 2021). Hoteliers leading the way in the most beautiful or shared photographs and videos may be a lot to ask. But visual story-telling is something we can do better than others.

Fifth, geo-social is an approach to social media interaction relying on geographic services and capabilities such as geocoding and geotagging (Needleman, Miller, & Jeffries, 2010). These can be difficult to manage for someone whose secondary position is social media management. Yet, geo-social is interactive and leads to brand communities and sales conversions better than other forms of social media.

Conclusion

Social media will continue to grow in importance. Hoteliers need to be on social media. We are lagging behind competing industries though. We need to catch up while keeping an eye on the future of social media.

We can catch up by beginning with hiring a social media manager for regional locations. They need to know the region's locations and people. Then, these social media managers need to be tasked with building more effective brand communities, converting potential customers into not only sales but loyal customers providing our organizations positive word of mouth marketing, and stay abreast of trends such as geo-social. All while building databases of data so we have ownership of guest data rather than tech organizations.

We can do this! But we are playing catch-up as lodging professionals.

References

Reprinted from the Hotel Business Review with permission from www.HotelExecutive.com