Facebook has more than 1.94 billion monthly active users as of Q1 2017 i.e. one fourth of world population browse Facebook at least once a month.

Also, according to statista.com survey research, among the most common ways for clients to endorse local businesses is word of mouth followed by Facebook; with 47% of respondents had endorsed local businesses through Facebook.

RateGain’s internal data shows growth in Facebook reviews and currently 10% of all hotel reviews are exclusively from Facebook channel.

So as a hotelier the natural question is “how to get best out Facebook for my hotel and where should I start?”

Start with the end in mind:

As a smart hotelier it is imperative to have clear goals defined for your Facebook strategy, below is an example of precise goal for guests and prospects, followed by tips to enhance your Hotel Facebook strategy.

1. Include Facebook reviews within your Guest Feedback process:

Once you build a guest feedback process give equal importance to review data from Facebook, efficiently managing Facebook reviews is important to get more repeat and referral guests, increase sales and beat competitors. Actively tracking and Managing Facebook reviews on your ORM platform cam improve efficiency. If you are using an online reputation tool like offered by RateGain, it is important to give equal importance to in managing reviews from Facebook. The first step for hotel is to authorize the Facebook token ticker if you do not do that you will not be able to see your own reviews.

2. Respond to reviews quickly:

Positive or negative all reviews need your response at earliest, because that directly reflects your commitment towards customer needs. Reviews become a great source of learning improvement areas within your hotel right from the horse’s mouth viz. your guests. Below examples are good to refer while dealing with reviews of all kind:

 3. Leverage Facebook’s Businesses on Messenger :

According to Facebook 53% of people, say they are more likely to do business with a business they can message so we should open our mode communication whenever and wherever customer need so explore customer service using Facebook’s Businesses on Messenger

You can easily link your Facebook user name with Facebook messenger like https://www.messenger.com/t/rateGain.HospitalityTechCompany/ and open an opportunity of communication on desktop or mobile.

 4. Earn your “Very responsive to messages” badge:

A response rate of 90% and a response time of 15 minutes can get your hotel Very responsive to messages badge, which leaves great first impression from Facebook profile visitors. Consider integrating this tool with your chat vendor like Jivo

5. Motivate Guests to do Facebook check-ins:

People check-in due to variety of reasons they want to flaunt, record their travel in timeline or want to catch up with friends who are coincidentally at the same place. For hotels check in has lot of hidden value to organically market your property because act as a soft endorsement by guest visible to everyone in their network. Therefore, it is important to have promotions and incentives to encourage guests check in your hotel through Facebook.

6. Give your guest Freemium & get Facebook likes in return:

It would be good idea to engage guest with free offers and hook them with your hotels Facebook page by offering them free Wi-Fi or cocktail or welcome kit if they like the Facebook page.

7. Use Facebook Ads:

Facebook Ad platform has some great targeting option that you can test e.g. behavioral targeting by people who are frequent visitors or business travelers, you can layer that with geo and device targeting. The goal of reaching out prospects and potential travelers who are not planning but open to inspiration can be accelerated by promoting high quality images of hotels that reflect the uniqueness of the hotel.

8. Run Facebook photo contest that could drive testimonials from guests :

Ask your guest to take a selfie with the hotel staff if they found five star services and post them on Facebook, set up a goal for hotel staff members and incentivize employees who get highest number of testimonials, leverage tools like wishpond for the same. This can be great tool to world of mouth marketing from guest and motivation for staff to ensure a consistent guest experience. Robust ORM platforms like RateGain allow you to set up goals for hotel staff across departments and can be used to track KRA / deliverable efficiently and achieving hotel operational excellence.

9. Use online reputation software to drive efficiency:

You no more need to login to Facebook, TripAdvisor and other OTAs individually to manage reviews,

By leveraging ORM technology, you get sentiment analysis extracted out of reviews from various channels including Facebook in digestible manner, along with suggested response templates that can help you in prompt reply. The latest ORM technology can help you enhance Hotel Reputation by extracting, scanning, analyzing, scoring comments and reviews on social networks. It also arms you with competitor insight that can be leveraged to build an effective social media strategy and hotel promotions.

Your turn now. Share your ideas around how to generate positive hotel reviews and improve your hotel’s Guest satisfaction by leveraging Facebook. Please share your insights by commenting below OR email me