1. BUDGET DEFYING LAUNCH STRATEGIES
USING SOCIAL MEDIA

2. AGENDA
 Social Media Marketing – Why?
 Type of Social Media & Traffic analytics
Top 10 ways for Hotels to promote Social Media
 How Hotels are embracing Social Media
 Case of International Hotel Brands
 Case of Citymax Hotels
 Best Practices
 How to track your success?
 Challenges ahead

3. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Social media can be defined as blending of technology and social interaction
for the co-creation of value. It is basically a type of online media that expedites
conversation as opposed to traditional media, which delivers content but doesn't
allow readers/viewers/listeners to participate in the creation where as Social
media allows people/potential end – users to talk, participate, share, network, and
bookmark online.
A recent (2010) report published by HVS suggest that social media is so
influential that the interactive marketing spend will near $55 billion and
represent 21% of all marketing spending by 2014. Social media will comprise 3%
to 6% of the interactive marketing spend. Additionally, the global average time
spent per person on social networking sites is now nearly 5.5 hours per month.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media)

4. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING - WHY?
Here are just some aspects of what social media can do for you:
 Reinforce your message and help it go viral;
 Embrace and project your brand’s personality;
 Allow for real-time, two-way communication;
 Allow you to communicate at point-of-need;
 Build business and generate ROI;
(Source: www.hvs.com)

5. TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS
Some commonly used and prominent social media platforms by Hotels on the
internet are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube
Below is the screenshot of the homepage for www.facebook.com

6. TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS
Some facts about Facebook
 MENA’s top five Facebook country markets are Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia,
Saudi Arabia and the UAE, account for 70% of all users in the region
 There are 5 million Facebook users in GCC off which UAE accounts for
31%, Saudi for 45% and North Africa has 7.7 million
 UAE has the oldest Facebook community in MENA with 41% of users being
over 30 years old,28% being 25-29 years old and 31% being under 25
years and majority (63%) are male
 Globally, people spend around 700 billion minutes per month on facebook
and the average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and
events

7. TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS
UAE - Traffic analytics for Facebook (Source: Spot on PR)
69% of UAE Facebook users are 63% of UAE Facebook users are Male
above 25

8. TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS
LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) with more than 67 million users representing 150
industries around the world, LinkedIn is a fast-growing professional networking site
that allows members to create business contacts, search for jobs, and find
potential clients.
Below is the screenshot of the homepage for www.linkedin.com

9. TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS
Some facts about LinkedIn:
 Launched on 5 May, 2003
 On an average 36.5 million people visit LinkedIn each month
 On a daily basis 1.9 million users log on to Linkedin globally and 14,900 in
UAE
 38% in the age group of 35-49 are the dominant users
 Globally, linkedIn has approximately 22.6 million daily page views in
comparison to 215,000 as seen in UAE

10. TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS
Global Traffic analytics for Linkedin (Source: www.quantcast.com)

11. TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS
Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006
(launched publicly in July 2006), is a social networking and micro-blogging
service that allows users to post their latest updates.
Below is a screenshot of the homepage for Twitter www.twitter.com

12. TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS
Some facts about twitter are:
 Twitter (TPS) recently published that they have 50 million tweets per day
globally — that’s an average of 600 tweets per second
 As of (Q2-2010) Twitter had 105 million registered users globally as revealed
by co-owner Biz Stone with 30,000 people joining twitter per day
 Nevertheless, as of 2009 UAE led twitter usage in the MENA region
accounting for nearly 5,778 of the total which stood at 14,296

13. TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS
Some facts about twitter are:
 Majority (35%) of the users tweet 2-5 times a day while only 16% tweet
more than 10 times
 Nearly 50% of the regional users opened a twitter account for personal
reasons as compared to only 10% being used for business
 Arab and Asians were the dominant users by nationality closely followed by
Europeans expats
Source: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/twitter & http://www.spotonpr.com

14. TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS
Traffic analytics for Twitter (Source: www.arabcrunch.com & Spot On PR)
Visitation statistics for Twitter.com Time spent on twitter globally 2008-09
Twitter users in Middle East, 2009

15. TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS
YouTube was founded in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim,
who were all early employees of Paypal. YouTube is the leader in online video,
sharing original videos worldwide through a Web experience. YouTube allows
people to easily upload and share video clips across the Internet through
websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email.
Below is the homepage for www.youtube.com

16. TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS
Some facts about YouTube:
 As of May 2010, YouTube exceeded 2 billion views a day globally
 Average time spend by a person is approximately 15 minutes a day
 70% of the traffic comes from outside the USA
 100 top advertisers have run campaigns on YouTube and Google content
network
 The number of advertisers using display adds on the site increased 10 fold in
the past year
Source: www.websitemonitoring.com

17. TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA & TRAFFIC ANALYTICS
Traffic analytics for Youtube (Source: www.quantcast.com)
Note: The above data in graph is available only for the US demographic

18. TOP 10 WAYS TO PROMOTE HOTELS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Do Your HOMEWORK
Top 10 ways to promote your hotel could be:
I - CREATE and upload custom pages on Facebook example of a page by
Citymax for „Maxx Music Bar & Grill/Al Barsha‟

19. TOP 10 WAYS TO PROMOTE HOTELS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
 Create & Promote destination blogs such as http://blog.aquaresorts.com/ for
local events, news
 Create and promote videos on www.youtube.com YouTube is the fourth largest
search engine and drives significant traffic
 Create an account on Flickr/picassa for photo sharing and post hotel and
destination photos on the sites
 Create a custom profile on Twitter with the hotel's phone number and website
address in the background http://twitter.com/CitymaxHotels

20. TOP 10 WAYS TO PROMOTE HOTELS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
II - MANAGE & PROMOTE
 Integrating and Cross-Linking Channels - Cross-link Flickr, Twitter, and
YouTube to your Facebook account. Integrating and Cross-linking the channels
will help you in optimization, keeping it fresh as well as in expanding your
network. Bring live feeds from your social media channels into your website.
Example: http://www.nickhotel.com/html/social-media.asp
Grow Fan –base on facebook and other platforms where your hotel profile is
listed
 Use online news channels for press releases and articles

21. TOP 10 WAYS TO PROMOTE HOTELS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
III - MONITOR
 Create a Social Media Reviews platform on your website to encourage
users to upload viral content on your website
 Monitor social media channels and review site
 Awareness of no. of followers
 Conversion through promo codes & Google analytics
 Relationships
 Engagement

22. 1.Grow Fan-base
USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA – INTERNATIONAL HOTEL BRANDS
Starwood hotels & Resorts was one of the first hotel companies to introduce a
social networking website. Some initiatives by Starwood so far have been:
 In June 2006, travelers from around the world vied for a chance to win a
vacation in its “Sherabration Sweepstakes” by sharing a personal travel story
 Then, to publicise its $6 billion makeover, Sheraton gave away 2,100 free
nights at 86 new or newly renovated hotels was initiated in October 2009
 The company also launched a new social media platform „Sheraton shared
moments‟ via multiple online communities including Twitter, Facebook users
share travel experiences with friends/family and public to win a dream holiday at
one of their properties in December 2009

23. 1.Grow Fan-base
USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA – BY INTERNATIONAL HOTEL BRANDS
 Aloft by Starwood introduced Second Life (www.secodnlife.com) and a first
hotel at doing so. Since its debut in 2006 it takes the inputs of second life
residents/consumer feedback on design features and incorporates it into real
aloft projects. Below is a screenshot of the actual website

24. 1.Grow Fan-base
USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA – BY INTERNATIONAL HOTEL BRANDS
Intercontinental Hotels & Resorts (hereafter IHG) partnered with Communispace
to build and facilitate three private online communities of some 300 members
each, all members of IHG’s loyalty program. At the core of the approach to social
marketing is the idea that IHG puts its customer at the center of everything.
The company recently extended its social marketing footprint by launching a
public community open to Priority Club Rewards members. IHG also utilizes
third-party social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Below is a
screenshot of the winter offer by IHG

25. 1.Grow Fan-base
USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA - BY CITYMAX HOTELS
Citymax has consciously made an effort to actively use social media platforms
such as Facebook and Twitter to maximise our reach to the target audience. We
however, would like to give our hotels and F&B outlets an individual identity and
hence have separate pages for each. Below is a screenshot of these

26. 1.Grow Fan-base
CASE OF CITYMAX HOTELS

27. 1.Grow Fan-base
CASE OF CITYMAX HOTELS
Citymax Hotels also intends to reach out to the regional GCC market and is
profiled on Maktoob by yahoo:
 http://www.ppc2you.com/vb/
 www.zawya.com/arabic/story.cfm
 www.al-s3odi.com/vb
Our consumer/guest feedback for Citymax, Al Barsha suggest that they are
happy with the hotels location close to Mall of the Emirates (MOE) and pricing.
Moving forward we intend to be in all Saudi forums such as
 www.star28.com
 www.saudi-stock.net
 www.khass.com/vb/index.php

28. 1.Grow Fan-base
SOCIAL MEDIA – BEST INDUSTRY PRACTICES
Social media makes your brand real. Hotels are now increasingly making social
media an integral part of their outreach. Some general tips for using social
media:
 Be authentic and create compelling content to bring your brand to life
 Live your brand and show your personality
 Be engaging and generate feedback
 Know your audience
 Repackage what you have, e.g., link across platforms and take your content
from other areas such as press releases and websites
 Combine social media with offline in-person events to solidify relationships
 Other useful tips are interact with people/potential guests, tell stories,
optimize different channels, aim at user-generated content and lastly, be
curious and experiment
Source: (www.hvs.com)

29. 1.Grow Fan-base
TRACKING SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS
To tackle the overload there are ways to track and monitor among the various
social media – and most of them are free. Third-party tools and technology such
as Google Alerts at http://www.google.com/alerts or eBuzz Connect can be
very useful.
Twitter offers myriad tracking apps such as Trendistic, Tweeteffect and
Twinfluence. Checking for feedback can become your 2010 real-time research
and development model. Other aspects to consider are:
 Benchmarking – note the obvious numbers
 Note the less obvious benchmarks- rankings/ferrals and customer satisfaction
scores
 Note ROI benchmarks - How much are you paying to acquire customers via
marketing or other channels

30. SOCIAL MEDIA: CHALLENGES AHEAD
AUDIENCE INPUT/SUGGESTIONS ?

31. SOURCES & REFERENCES USED
SOURCES
 How are hotels embracing social media in 2010 – by www.hvs.com February 2010
 www.quantcast.com
 www.hospitalitynet.org
 www.websitemonitoring.com
 www.arabcruch.com
 www.spotonpr.com
 www.nielsen.com

32. THANK YOU