CHANGING HOW HOSPITALITY DOES SOCIAL
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As the COVID-19 pandemic has affected our daily lives, it has also affected how we use social media. For instance, Facebook has reported an increase of 77 million more daily active users due to the stay-at-home orders and there has been a 20% year-over-year increase in the time spent on mobile apps.

As a business, it is critical to understand how your consumers’ behavior is changing on social media as the usage increases. How do you make sure that you are reaching the right audience, in the right place, at the right time, and with the right message during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Based on BCV’s research and strategic work with hundreds of hotels, we’re breaking down the shifts in the social media landscape that can inform your marketing strategy during COVID-19.

Shifts in Optimal Posting Time

In a recent study, data gathered between March and April notes that the current best times to post content on each platform are as follows:

Facebook: Monday, Wednesday & Friday from 10am – 11am

Instagram: Monday, Tuesday & Friday from 11am – 2pm

Twitter: Friday from 7 – 9am

LinkedIn: Wednesday at 3 p.m | Thursday from 9am – 10am, | | Friday from 11am – 12pm

Shifts in Paid Media

Paid social media has become cheaper during the COVID-19 pandemic due to increased users on the platforms and decreased advertising competition. In a recent study comparing Q4 2019 and Q1 2020 (including during COVID-19), organic content engagement has increased overall.

  • Average post engagement for all posts have INCREASED by 0.7%, now at 3.41%.

  • Average video post engagement for all posts have INCREASED by 1%, now at 6.15%.

  • Average photo post engagement for all posts have INCREASED by 1.3%, now at 4.48%.

Share Important Business Updates

As operational functions of your business continue to shift, social media is an ideal marketing tool to share those updates with your past and future guests.

Giving all marketers hope, only 8% of people surveyed believe that businesses should stop advertising during the COVID-19 outbreak.

In March 2020, there were 3.5 BILLION more clicks on Facebook ads worldwide than compared to December 2019.
Facebook’s average CPM (cost-per-thousand) decreased by more than 50% from November 2019 to March 2020, meaning an advertiser can reach twice as many people for the same amount of money spent on a campaign. Facebook’s average CPC also went down from $0.11 in January 2020 to $0.09 in March.

The benefits of a pre-opening social media campaign are totally worth the effort. Social is the perfect place to build an audience, share teasers, generate early room bookings and build out a loyal following. You’re excited about your property. Share that enthusiasm with future guests and build into the launch–starting now.

The ultimate goal of a pre-open social media campaign is to garner awareness. You want to do everything possible to help your hotel make a splash on it’s grand opening. There are several content strategies to drive interest and excitement ahead of opening.

Social Pre-Open Strategies Can Be Scrappy

A pre-open strategy is a three-tiered content approach.

  • Phase one is the teaser phase. The priorities during this phase are building buzz, gaining and maintaining momentum and managing online conversations.

  • Phase two is the reveal phase—this phase focuses on activating strategies and driving reservations.

  • The third phase is what we’d consider to be the celebration phase. This is when the hotel is opened, guests are experiencing the new property first-hand and we’re able to start implementing a user generated content strategy.

Show Your Stuff with Pre-Opening Images

  • Sharing renderings during the pre-open phase is a great starting point.

  • Detail shots like a close up of a chandelier or wallpaper pattern show off the aesthetic you’re going for.

  • Consider animation or movement to the photo to snap things up.

Content Program Considerations

  1. It’s incredibly important to schedule a social-friendly, lifestyle content shoot as soon as possible when the hotel is finished so we can ensure we’re only using accurate images to portray the space post-opening.

  2. Destination content is another important element in our content strategy both pre and post-open. Focus on telling the entire story of what a stay looks like as opposed to only focusing on the hotel spaces. Think of how you can  get the local community, influencers & media involved.

  3. Remember to include  the local community and invite them to come enjoy the hotel, whether it’s by visiting one of the media outlets, or by booking a staycation.

The Power of Influencers

Influencers are a great way to get the word out about the hotel and grow our audience.

  • We recommend partnering with influencers during the celebration stage of the pre-open strategy.

  • Strategically select influencers that are in line with the hotel’s target demographics (family travel, couples getaway, etc.)

  • By partnering with an influencer, you’ll gain exposure to his or her followers and it’s a great way to grow your following organically. Influencer partnerships are also a great way to build up your content library.

  • We recommend inviting the influencers for a complimentary stay and requesting any content captured be shared with the hotel for future use.

The Performance of Paid Social Ads

For brand new properties, we recommend a community building ad on Facebook to generate fans. Run this campaign until you reach a fanbase of 3k. Top priority for both Facebook and Instagram will be Post Elevation campaigns. These campaigns boost your content to a targeted audience of existing and potential followers to increase reach and engagement. As you’re closer to opening and special offers have been confirmed, we recommend implementing various Website Click campaigns. These can run in Facebook or Instagram feed and Instagram stories. This ad type allows you to drive people back to the website and encourage bookings. If budget allows, we also recommend implementing a Reach campaign to drive foot traffic and awareness to the property and its outlets.

Conclusion: It’s Never Too Early to Start Pre-Opening

Whether you’re building, renovating or reimagining a property, that physical work takes months. The same can be said for your digital marketing. Leveraging the visual power of Instagram and Facebook, there are many ways to establish a foundation, build an audience and show off your flair over time. The importance of starting social in synch with the property timeline has never been more opportunistic. Let’s get started!

For more information check out these resources!

How UK Hospitality Can Leverage Social Ahead of Reopening to the Public

Today, more people are home than ever before; so, it’s not surprising that social media usage is up significantly. As in 50% increased Facebook usage, according to Social Media Today.

While will likely see this change again once the crisis is over, transformative events like this have had lasting effects on our behaviors. For example, Facebook’s growth started to multiply after the 2008 financial crisis (5x growth from 2007 to 2009 according to Statista). On the other side of Covid-19 we will still visit our favorite shops, restaurants, and resorts—especially once we are able to safely step out again.

However, we will be planning, sharing, and experiencing these adventures in a more connected way. More than ever we will be looking for those social cues from our friends, families and influencers. According to BCV Social, inquiries into hotels’ services via Facebook Messenger and Instagram Direct increased by 80% in May, 2020. People are starting to plan trips not just by surveying the travel landscape but by asking specific questions about their intended destination.

Marketers need to rethink the way they leverage social media in engaging their communities. The content that worked before may not work in the post-COVID-19 era. Here are three key topics to help hotels connect with travelers in the post-COVID 19 world.

Health and Safety Are Foundational Elements

Travelers need to feel safe. One of the most important aspects that will restrict room booking is a feeling of a lack of ‘hygiene and cleanliness’ measures taken by a hotel. Many hotels are now implementing contact-less services, securing third-party hygiene certifications, and applying social distancing measures as per the guidelines issued by the WHO, the national government, and the local authorities. Additionally, many hotels are forming partnerships with hospitals and healthcare companies. Social media managers will have to cover the entire spectrum of safety content on their calendar. Ensuring they cover physical safety in addition to the emotional aspects of feeling safe. About 70% of consumers turn to social media for customer service needs. It is crucial for social media managers to have an empathetic response ready with clear objectives such as ‘listen’, ‘appreciate’ and ‘resolve’. These are foundational elements that travelers need to hear to feel comfortable with picturing their travel at the property.

Inspiration Is Still The Key Travel Driver

More than ever we are thinking about getting out. We are picturing that amazing spa, resort, pool, lounge, bar, or whatever motivates people to get out and come together for new places and experiences. While health and safety are foundational elements, the amazing experience and amenities are the motivating elements. Do not shy away from celebrating the things we need now more than ever.

Celebrate User-generated Content

Celebrate users content and experiences. Be authentic, respectful and appreciative of them sharing their story. For example, encourage people to share about their last road trip, staycation, or other travel memory, which you can then feature on your social media platforms. Over 60% of people rely on reviews and recommendations to make informed buying decisions, according to Podium, a cloud-based company that provides interaction management tools to businesses. This will likely increase as people seek confirmation that properties are ready for them. Therefore, treat early travelers as brand ambassadors. Help them understand how important they are and how great of an experience they will have. Over-communicate with them as they will in-turn share their experience to all of us who are watching these early adventurers.

During the initial phase of the crisis, people turned to social media to stay connected with the outside world. Today, they are remembering past trips, planning for their first trip back out, and connecting with hotels to inquire about services, all through social media. Every social media engagement insight points to one thing: People will travel again. What matters now is how hotels engage with them, inspire them, and most importantly make them feel safe and confident about their stay at hotels.

Another Summit, another virtual Platform, yet another discussion on the impact of the ongoing pandemic which has placed the world’s largest democracy in lockdown for the last four months. In the pre-COVID era, this summit would be happening in a hotel where participants, speakers, and panelists would have flown into a city and stayed at a city hotel for the 2-day long event helping the hotel with new guests to serve and provide an unparalleled experience. However, events, conferences, and corporate travel remain low on the recovery agenda, and therefore the question for every hotelier remains – How Do We Get Our Guests Back?

A fortnight back, I was honored to be part of an esteemed panel at the Hotelier India Summit comprising of hotel sales and marketing leaders to discuss the same CS Ramachandran, VP- Hotel Revenue Optimization, Preferred Hotels & Resorts, Dhananjay Saliankar, Head-sales & Marketing India, Fortune Hotels, Kush Kapoor, CEO, Roseate Hotels & Resorts, Manoj Nair, National Marketing Leader-India, FCM Travel Solutions, Prasad Iyer, VP, E-Commerce, Distribution & Rewards, Lemon Tree Hotels, and last but by no means the least Sachin Pabreja, Co-founder, Eazydiner.

What’s On the Guest’s Mind?

The famed ‘pent-up demand’ will soon come to the surface as more tourist destinations in India contain the virus and put in place procedures to mitigate the virus. As the leisure traveler would lead the recovery, the key driver for hotels would not be price but experience, health, safety, and flexibility in handling cancellations.

However, at the same time, hotels will have to walk a fine line to ensure that the experience they promise does not appear like a medical tourism ad due to prevailing social distancing and safety norms.

Instead, contact-less solutions are being adopted by more hotels to implement steps like digital check-in, use of QR codes to keep things smooth and safe as well as the ‘safe car promise’ where all vehicles will undergo deep cleaning and each car will have a PPE kit for the guests.

The challenge for hotel commercial and marketing teams would be to manage these expectations in an already complex decision-making process and use social media to communicate the right price, the right experience, and the right safety standards.

This is where social media marketing plays a critical role.

How is Social Media playing a vital role?

In the Pre-COVID times, Facebook and Instagram played a key role in driving travel inspiration; however a significant role was also played by family and friends who would recommend travel destinations. With no one traveling at the moment, and very few people aware of which destinations are safe, which hotels are taking care of safety, the role of social media would now further increase as that would be the first source for getting up to date information.

Therefore, more than ever before, hotels have to look at social media as the channel to bring back guests and invest time, effort, and resources in continually communicating with potential travelers to win their trust and engage them.

While hotels attempt to re-establish a connect, they need to keep two age-old ideas at the core of their strategy

  1. One Size Does Not Fit All. Each hotel property is designed for a specific set of travelers, keeping in mind the taste, lifestyle of the guests that would stay there. The same strategy needs to be applied to your social media strategy and continuously seek the right kind of guest with the right messaging.

  2. Don’t Prioritize Reach Over Reputation. Most marketing leaders worry about reach, but in the post-COVID world when the number of travelers would substantially shrink for the next 18-24 months, reach, engagement might not be the right metric to target, instead of hotels should invest in managing their reputation and ensuring all guest queries, feedback, needs are answered instantly so that they can trust the property more efficiently. 24/7 Personalized and Real-time Monitoring is critical for hotels in the post-COVID world where trust is at an all-time low. The best example that I like to quote is when a guest at The Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay reported a faulty door lock on social media, tagging the hotel and using the hashtag #fail which is the 3rd highest used Hashtag and can instantly be picked up by prospecting guests and even reach media sites to show the fault on the part of a prestigious brand like Ritz Carlton. Due to real-time monitoring, not only did the hotel get alerted immediately and due to the ability to personalize the guest experience, they not only replaced the chain in an hour but also as an apology placed a bottle of his favorite single malt whisky to both mitigate the negative experience. The guest of course, captured this experience on social media tagging the hotel and using the hashtag #unrealcustomerservice and therefore not only become a loyal guest, but also helping prospective guests choose the hotel on their future trips.

Independent/mid-scale hotels can’t compromise on social media. In a poll conducted by BCV a travel technology company suggested that over 25% of them would invest close to 50% of their marketing budgets in social media this year. This number becomes more relevant for independent/ mid-sized hotel chains as their marketing budgets do not allow them to spend heavily on ATL advertising.

Due to lower brand salience, independent hotels will have to put in extra to win the guests’ trust. Social media is a level playing field, and with the right content done creatively and innovatively, hotels of any size can outdo the biggest chains.

Most hotels today rely on in-house teams to deliver this; however, in-house teams can drive social media engagement, but can’t bring varied experience from working with other hotel brands, cutting-edge technology as well as focus on driving RoI.

How do you convince guests to come back with Social Media?

We are witnessing that Middle East and South East Asia are now seeing a pick-up in economic as well as travel activity and therefore is seeing a substantial pick-up in bookings. While India recovers and the high-demand season approaches in the next three months, it’s a golden time for all the hoteliers to revise, refresh, and restart things that haven’t been done for a long. This is the time when hotels should re-look into their strategy, try to explore all channels of digital marketing, make the best use of social media.

BCV, one of the most awarded social media agency focused on hospitality solHutions that works with over 400+ luxury hotels across the world, has been working with luxury hotels across Asia helping them not only to increase engagement but also drive RoI during the pandemic through a tailored social media engagement strategy using its proprietary technology that also delivers 24/7 real-time monitoring.

One such example is our work with Cinnamon Hotels in Maldives one of the first destinations to welcome back tourists. Our approach for them was to keep engagement on through-out the pandemic and deploy a four-step campaign across 45 days using different platforms and content formats created by BCV’s in-house creative team. The campaign helped them generated 204 Room nights and while delivering an ROI 274 on spends, clearly showing that social media continues to drive results even in the crisis and is the right channel for hotels to use to drive demand back. So what should hotels keep in mind when looking to get guests back:

DON’T TAKE THE PEDAL OFF SOCIAL. Irrespective of your size and ability to spend on social, hotels should not stop spends on social media, as in the absence of actual visits, the only way to build brand salience and mind-share is through targeted content continuously served to prospective guests.

DON’T MAKE HEALTH AND SAFETY BORING. As we look to welcome guests back by assuring them of safety, hotels should make sure they do not make hospitality boring and actually look at making health attractive and engaging both through social media content as well as on property. This could be easily achieved by replacing videos and photos of masks and sanitizers with shots of health-juices and immunity boosters that are served as a welcome drink.

MAKE ROI YOUR KEY METRIC. Every Digital Platform has its own metrics and today, Digital Marketers can track close to 50 metrics to show success such as followers, traffic, share of voice and many more however as hospitality marketers emerge from this pandemic, the only thing their social media strategy should work towards is actual revenue contribution and ROI from paid media efforts.

According to a survey of more than 25,000 consumers in 30 markets, Facebook and Instagram saw a 40% increase in usage during Q1 of 2020.

For many brands and businesses, this usage uptick provides a greater opportunity to connect with consumers and build community. But you may be wondering: What type of content should be published during a crisis and where should it be distributed?

Based on BCV’s strategic social media work with hundreds of hotels, these are the key steps we recommend taking today to ensure your hotel can maintain a competitive advantage and drive brand awareness.

Lead With Empathy & Creativity

It’s important to ensure that your content is relevant and offers value to consumers, whether educational, informative, or interactive.

Showcase how your brand intends to support those affected by the crisis (e.g. donating goods, providing physical space for relief efforts, or waiving delivery fees). Videos or messages from your CEO or executive committee are encouraged.

Launch a feel-good giveaway or surprise-and-delight campaign featuring gift cards for future use or property swag. BCV witnessed a 36% increase in average post engagements & positive sentiment in a recently launched giveaway campaign.

Deliver Amenities Digitally

With the majority of the world unable to travel right now, hotels have an opportunity to share their services digitally through virtual experiences. Think cooking tips, fitness routines, and at-home happy hours.

Shift your content development strategy to prioritize interactive content such as at-home cooking videos hosted by your Executive Chef or stream a unique property feature live on Instagram.

For properties with family-centric offerings, consider transforming some of your hero images into coloring pages to share with your audience (a great activity for children and way to keep your property top of mind).

Share Important Business Updates

As operational functions of your business continue to shift, social media is an ideal marketing tool to share those updates with your past and future guests.

Shifts in hours of operation, new cleaning procedures, refund policies, etc.

Travel industry news and updates, including destination-specific travel regulations.

As a hospitality marketer, it can be daunting to think about how to communicate to your guests during the COVID-19 pandemic. Where and how do you begin? What happens as markets start to re-open and travel begins again? We at BCV are breaking down a phased approach to social media marketing to make it easier for you to share your adjusted messaging during the crisis.

Phase 0: Shift Your Content

Enter the Facebook pixel, a social media tracking tool and the hospitality industry’s digital best friend. Using a pixel allows you to retarget online audiences, track revenue, and garner invaluable insights into your target market’s planning and booking habits.

But before we get into all the benefits the Facebook pixel can provide, let’s take a look at what it is and how you can use it.

What is the Facebook pixel?

You can and should communicate to your audience right now by shifting your content strategy. This includes adjusting your tone and message. Here are a few considerations to keep in mind:

  • Be sensitive to your specific market’s situation.

  • Acknowledge the current environment and offer utility rather than selling to your audience.

  • Engage in real-time conversation through community management.

Phase 1: Prior to Re-Opening Your Property

We recommend curating and creating sensitive and appropriate content at least 1-3 months prior to re-opening in order to engage your audience and future guests. Building a community is essential in order to maintain relationships with your audience and build future business. A few recommendations are:

  • Invite your community to share their favorite travel memories.

  • Share “EGC” employee-generated content from home.

  • Leverage community hashtags and trends, such as stay-at-home challenges and fun “choose your quarantine house” polls.

  • Invite your community to learn “insider tips” from the experts on property.

Phase 2: Re-Opening Plan

Your re-opening plan should be separate from your booking plan. Re-opening should focus on awareness and your safety messaging. A few recommendations are:

  • Share steps being taken to ensure a safe environment.

  • Consider incorporating a message from leadership.

  • Provide a “behind-the-scenes” look at the property.

  • Share “staff highlights” that show how they are keeping the property safe for your guests.

Phase 3: Booking Relaunch

Implementing a booking relaunch plan should be done with great sensitivity and hyper-targeting. You will want to ensure that you are communicating about future bookings or offers to audiences that can travel and that would not be violating any government restrictions. A few recommendations are:

  • Launch a booking campaign specific to social media users who have engaged on your pages during the pandemic.

  • Drive local “staycations” once your market has deemed travel to be safe.

  • Promote F&B and amenities that are available for locals to enjoy.

  • Utilize community and tourism hashtags that safely promote the re-integration into travel.

Social Media Advertising

How does paid social media fit into your phased content approach for hospitality? Here are three key business objectives that you can achieve through your paid social:

Awareness

  1. Reach a large audience with the safety messaging from your property in order to reassure guests or future prospects.

  2. Share critical messaging regarding the re-opening date for your property, or share that your property is still open with any modified amenities.

  3. Successfully reach a local audience with details about open F&B outlets and provide directions to the location.

Engagement

  1. Reignite enthusiasm for the property and foster community engagement by optimizing for engagements such as likes, clicks, and shares.

  2. Consider spotlighting what guests miss most about the hotel to further drive the conversation about aspirational future travel.

Conversions

  1. Once it is safe to do so in your market, drive future bookings through hyper-targeting your audience. Ensure that your message is reaching the right consumers such as local drive-markets for “staycations” or F&B specials.

  2. Incorporate any brand promotions and consider cross-promotion with local tourism organizations to reassure guests and highlight the destination.

Chicago, June 17th, 2019: RateGain today announced the acquisition of BCV, the only hospitality focused social media provider with the capacity to monitor and engage the social universe 24 X 7. BCV will now offer a comprehensive Guest Experience Cloud platform with an arsenal of proprietary digital products designed to increase direct sales, provide unparalleled guest interactions, and mitigate negative experiences, all helping hotel chains maximize guest lifetime value. This acquisition will further help RateGain unlock revenue across hotel chains, airlines, car rentals, OTAs, cruise lines, package providers, TMCs, and vacation rentals.

This comprehensive Guest Experience Cloud platform combines the power of BCV’s social media listening, analytics, creative, and engagement capabilities with RateGain’s AI-driven cognitive revenue management and smart distribution solutions.

Commenting on the acquisition, Bhanu Chopra, Founder & CEO, RateGain said, “We are delighted to welcome Benji, Ari, Cece and the BCV team to the RateGain family. RateGain and BCV will replace the traditional waterfall methodology of data collection, analysis and action with a more agile model that would bring revenue management, sales and marketing together, breaking down the traditional silos to generate unprecedented visibility and control to influence and impact the guest journey and directly measure impact on booking and Net RevPAR to maximize guest lifetime value.”

Commenting on the acquisition, Benji Greenberg, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, BCV said, “We couldn’t be more excited to be a part of the global RateGain family. This deal will increase our ability to bring ‘deep learning’ powered applications for the travel and hospitality industry into the near future. The new integrated platform will give 125,000+ hotel properties access to millions of proprietary social profiles to serve the right message, to the right guest, on the right channel, and elevate the brand experience for guests across the research, plan, and book portions of their journey. We will now have access to far more rate intelligence to ensure we’re hitting the right person across the right platform while increasing guest lifetime value for hotels.”

RateGain will now be a global award-winning team with the end-to-end solution capability of maximizing revenue every day, including the guest experience cloud, cognitive revenue management and smart distribution solutions that process over 240 billion data points, track online conversations across 395,000 hotels globally, and connect to 1,500+ demand partners, impacting over $13 billion in revenue annually.

About RateGain

RateGain is the #1 provider of SaaS products, which help travel, and hospitality companies make more revenue every day. RateGain offers products, which help with rate intelligence, cognitive revenue management, smart e-distribution, and brand engagement. RateGain is proud to support 125,000+ hotel properties globally influencing 13 Bn $ revenue by providing 240 billion rate and availability updates & powering over 30 Million bookings. RateGain is trusted by 25 out of the top 30 OTAs, tour operators and wholesalers, 23 of the top 30 hotel chains, 7 out of the top 10 car rental companies, top 5 cruise lines, and many leading airlines worldwide. In 2018, RateGain acquired DHISCO, which made it the only company in the world to offer end-to-end smart distribution. In June 2019, RateGain acquired award-winning BCV to offer the guest experience cloud to maximize guest lifetime value for hospitality chains. For more information, visit www.rategain.com

About BCV

BCV is the leading provider of technology enabled social media solutions for the hospitality industry. Partnering with 400+ hotels across 20+ leading hotel chains and management companies, BCV drives results and delivers ROI via expert social media strategy and execution tailored specifically to the needs of hotels. Please visit www.bcvsocialprod.wpenginepowered.com

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this release are forward-looking statements, which involve some risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. All statements, other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to the statements containing the words ‘planned,’ ‘expects,’ ‘believes,’ strategy,’ ‘opportunity,’ ‘anticipates,’ ‘hopes’ or other similar words. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding impact of pending regulatory proceedings, fluctuations in earnings, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services, data services and consulting services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, customer acceptance of our services, products and fee structures, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, our ability to integrate acquired assets in a cost-effective and timely manner, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-timeframe contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, the success of our brand development efforts, liability for damages.

Media Contact

Shweta Rawat

Head of Marketing-RateGain

shweta.rawat@rategain.com

+91 98100 30811

Ankit Chaturvedi

Brand Manager-RateGain

ankit.chaturvedi@rategain.com

+91 9654502760