W Hotels Worldwide H2H – Who is doing it well on Social Media?
Mathieu Chanoux MBA 2 A
Facebook With over 158,000 fans on Facebook and 26,800 followers on Twitter, we can say that the brand owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts have acquired a large customer base.
Through this two touchpoints the Hotel is able to respond to any type of complaints and inform guest services, as this is the global account. Indeed each local W Hotel has it’s own Twitter account and most of the time their own Facebook. Their advantage in this case is that they are able to respond to complaints and inform guest services.
Instagram In terms of visual touchpoints, we can say that the hotel brand is quite popular with almost 50,000 followers in Instagram. They want to convey a story of luxurious and exotic places to the guests and it seems to have a positive echo to the mind of the customers.
Youtube Meanwhile, it seems that the Youtube page (focus on videos) doesn’t seem to have the same success as they only have 688 suscribers. The content seem to be interesting as they provide special sections that characterize the brand such as destinations, design and fashion, but sadly they don’t seem to catch the attention of the guests on this platform.
Foursquare
The particularity of W Hotels is that they are great at engaging influencers through events, using notably the Foursquare touchpoint (for example they can promote Foursquare scavengers hunts). They also provide via this platform guest discounts for several kind of services and improve the loyalty of their guests by this process.
Trip Advisor In terms of guest thoughts and complains, the W Hotels customers can react on three different touchpoints, the social media platform (twitter & Facebook), the OTA’s (mostly TripAdvisor) and the official website of the Hotel. In 10 W hotels monitored on Trip Advisor, I just found out 2 where the management reacted to the guest’s thoughts, which is clearly not enough in those digital times.
General thoughts about W Hotels The general response time varies from Hotel to Hotel to guest thoughts, but in the case of Facebook and Twitter it’s quite reactive (within the day if the community manager is present). As pointed previously, a better presence on Trip Advisor would be advised, to greater the appeal of W Hotels. I think W Hotels have a H2H approach, in the sense that they tend to engage their followers in various events (Foursquare), and inform them as much as they can on their services on social platforms without making « push/agressive » publicity just to promote their brand.
What they could do better Monitoring better the Trip Advisor tool, that could bring them a competitive advantage in the eyes of the guests Being more active on Twitter feeds for certain hotels, as they seem to post only once every week, just to promote specific events Implement storytelling in their Facebook posts, make the guests « dream », as they already have a consequent fan base.