This guest blog is by Casey Tilli and Isaac Gerstenzang as part of our themed content hosted the first week of each month, with December focusing on hotels and resorts. Both Casey and Isaac are part of Destination Hotels & Resorts and combined manage their online marketing, social media and public relations efforts.
At Destination® Hotels & Resorts we are embracing the power of social media and understand its importance in building an online presence and using it to create an online community. Each of our properties have their own distinct identity, therefore, we have created guidelines and a full social media manual to offer support and enhance the independent social media programs run by team members at each of our hotels and resorts. With such an independent and unique collection of hotels and resorts, we need more than a one size fits all approach. Destination Hotels & Resorts’ offers an unparalleled commitment to service, the finest attention to detail, world class cuisines, luxurious elegance and personal touches that create a singular experience unique to each of our destinations across the United States. We help each of our individual property’s team members to build successful social media programs by offering tools, resources and ongoing education that in turn, allow them to tell their individual story and build online communities.
The Destination® social media strategy filters down to our properties who adapt it to develop their own social media platforms which in turn support our overall Destination® Hotels & Resorts social media strategy. This overall strategy encourages our hotels and resorts to maintain their own identity and allows them to be the “experts” on their destination and experiences. Our goal is to provide guidance and support to the teams or individuals who manage social media at each of our properties. This is accomplished through open and ongoing communication. Webinar training sessions, community calls and email communications allow us to constantly educate our team and ourselves. We encourage our Destination® community to learn from each other through the sharing of best practices, case studies, new ideas and asking questions. We realize that we can gain a lot of insight from one another.
The three core elements of our social media strategy include:
- Reputation management and listening to our guests
- Establish our hotels and resorts as experts on their local markets
- Search engine optimization
In order to provide the best service possible to our guests, we begin with listening to what they have to say. We provide our hotels and resorts with tools for listening and monitoring which include Revinate’s reputation management platform. We make a variety of resources available so that the properties can effectively listen to what our guests are saying and engage in the conversation, help them when possible, and offer information and support. We provide training as needed to ensure that these tools are used effectively.
We recognize that the staff at our hotels and resorts are the experts. Whether it’s the geographic location, spa, golf, family activities or other highlights of our collection, the on-property team knows what’s going on better than anyone. Therefore, we encourage our social media team to provide guests with helpful, insightful and fun information about their hotel or resort and their destination. This is done through a variety of channels including but not limited to Facebook, Twitter, foursquare and blogs on their websites.
As often as possible, we encourage our properties to link their social media content back to their property website or blog. This all funnels into the Destination® Hotels & Resorts blog to create a rich library of travel content establishing us as the experts in meetings, spa, golf, culinary and recreational experiences within our local markets. Our blog posts which can now number up to as many as ten per day allow us to rank high in the search engines, a key element of our strategy.
We are excited about the evolving channels through which we can interact with our guests. Social media allows us to communicate with our guests to provide an unparalleled commitment to service and deliver distinct experiences whether our guests are staying with us or exploring our hotels and resorts online.
See Destination® Hotels & Resorts social media in action on Facebook and Twitter.