Social media hype generates attraction at a hotel pre-opening
The pre-opening stage of hotels/resorts is a big challenge to newly recruited staff and management but also a valuable opportunity professionally to sharpen their skills in various aspects. At the pre-opening stage our key target is the guest. So, we cannot be isolated till the contract is completed; we have to reach out to society in order to touch the guest’s heart.
Guests will not come to you just because a new hotel has been built or that this is a new concept of lodging. To entice guests one needs to find new ways to attract people to the hotel.
Towards this end, social networking is the most effective and cheapest concept to touch their hearts through many creative ways and focusing on a number of social groups like the older and younger generation; a group of people with similar interests; religious groups, cultural groups without cultural barriers and geographical accessibility.
We have to begin advertising and publish our stages of development, vision and mission from the beginning and get people talking about us; by encouraging feedback or blogging their ideas about us to take on the world out there.
In relation to publication in the print media, advertising via newspaper and magazine, showing sign boards, inviting the media to visit the construction site and arranging interviews with leading professionals in the industry is another method to get the public interested.
In this respect, we can organise events through social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Blogs, etc and through this social media we can spread the word fast both here and abroad.
Our images and broadcasting videos can easily and rapidly share among social media sites thereby overcoming social boundaries or geographical accessibility via Youtube, Facebook, Flicker, Pinterest when we reach the promotional stage of the opening of the hotel or resort.
Social media users can even go through a virtual tour of the hotel premises, which is one of the advantages we have in our attempt to reach out to our guests’ through a virtual event.
We can work with world leading experts in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) companies such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, adding our web site and social networking pages to the hotel registry web sites and submit press releases on online press releases (PR) web sites, etc.
This has to be done approximately 12 months prior to commencing the SEO to show your ratings. This will improve direct marketing and online booking will rise rapidly within a very short period after which hotel operations could commence.
Furthermore, a reasonable percentage spend would have to be incurred from the online direct marketing profit into SEO to ensure high rates that could secure online bookings, according to my experience. So IT professionals out there, here’s hoping you will take this into account before venturing into the next plan for the pre-opening of a hotel or resort.
(The writer is an IT Executive at The Deer Park hotel (Pvt) Ltd, Girithale, (Polonnaruwa)