Hraba Hospitality Consulting

I think we need to start with a couple presuppositions about social media:

1) It’s the wild west of social media.

2) This isn’t rocket science – it’s about old school customer service.

3) Knee jerk reactionary business owners will always blow things out of proportion, dodge accountability, and blind themselves to what’s really happening to their brand through the eyes of clients. You don’t need social media for that…. it’s been that way for centuries. Of course reviewers shouldn’t be marked as “problem guests” for writing a critical review – that’s poor real-world management of information, and not about the nature of the information itself.  This is a major component of the flawed (more…)

Cheers and good day! Your friendly neighborhood Hotelier trying to stay on top of hotel news, and travel info, and hospitality & management philosophy… oh yeah… and technology or social media.  Okay okay… I am apparently trying to keep you updated on everything, and here is a little more from my corner of the internet…. endless relevant information filtered into a relatively decadent lunch sized chunk.  Enjoy!  Don’t hesitate (more…)

I actually got into a conversation on linked in today!  Go figure… I haven’t used it much as the “professional facebook”, but every once in awhile meaningful discussion about the industry pops up…. even then I typically don’t dive in.  But it is interesting…. so much conversation about the recession being over, and hoteliers, ownership, and properties are popping up their heads to see if they see their shadow.  As real winter looms, our proverbial “winter of discontent” wanes.  But instead of being rife with joy… let’s cast our doom & gloom nets out a bit.  If you look anywhere in media – fear and panic are often confused and countered by (more…)

The rest that is cut off (hey I am a hotel guy, not a HTML guy) says “($42/month), would you?”  You can take the survey yourself right here: TripAdvisor Survey for Owners.

I will let the pic speak for itself.  I know it’s just a survey, but I assume some (more…)

Once again, Hotels Mag & Mr. Hartesvelt have come up with an interesting piece… this time in regards to “Random Acts of Marketing” and hotels PR people being a bit beleaguered in these times, and acting out accordingly.  I, once again, had too long a blog response and note that the comments section isn’t always the best place for banter… or at least I have trouble posting there at times.  In preparation of that, I linked the article above…. and put my own thoughts here just in case.

The best marketers are skeptics or operators that turned into marketers… because marketing has been a land of long lunches, little data, & arcane, questionable demonstrable results…. ALWAYS.  When times are good, the greased cogs and gears tick forward inevitably… often (more…)

Mr. Kirby from Hotels Magazine has written a great piece about @hiltonsuggests and their new model of using twitter. In light of that, the massive amount of new twitterers/followers since my posts about the development of an “e-concierge / Concierge 2.0″ role, as well as how to effectively establish and utilize your brand using the tool of social media… I thought I would expand a bit and touch on it again.

It is exciting to see brands establishing themselves as I had envisioned… not vapid spam marketing, but being leaders in helping guests. Hospitality is the name of the game, and the only way to build your brand isn’t to market it, so much as effectively position it, with deference to your guests and not your marketing department.

Kirby’s post talks about active searching for guests, instead of the passive approach; letting them come to you. Albeit a massive undertaking for a flag like Hilton, it will also be incredible effective.  I have been doing this for a couple years, and it really works. If you are a property with hot springs… search hot springs.  If you are a property in a wine growing region with fine dining… I think you get it. Fact is, this is INCREDIBLY time consuming, and I have backed off of it a little in need of positioning and building the social media presence for a number of clients… but there should be a point I am back to having the time to filter through aggressive wide netting of google alerts, backtype, twitter search, and other RSS’.  In fact, I think I totally melted down at one point through a blog post, as noted here.

In fact… the following will start to really help you position your property on something like twitter:

1) Firmly commit yourself to the geography and history – know your story, know where you came from, and know what your offerings are, what makes you special.. and share it!

2) Ingratiate yourself to the community – share city and county wide news, events, stories, photos, etc. Celebrate the Juniour Varsity going to state, or the new art gallery exhibit.  People don’t often care about a hotel.  They *do* care about what matters to *them*.  If you share and come together over similar interests, you will start to matter to the social web. Become a leader in information about your surroundings and tap into people’s interests. It isn’t all about *you*. It isn’t about wanting to sell your rooms, talk about your rentals, or pitch your restaurant. If you are myopic enough to think only of yourself, you won’t be as relevant as if you represent yourself as part of a community. Don’t just offer a room rate, talk about what makes a room special – from the historic quirks to green room design.  Instead of selling your bike rentals, talk about the incredible (more…)

Spot on and completely hilarious, I am sure many of you have felt this frustration. Apparently, everything is negotiable nowadays, eh? This makes it nice and ridiculous, for easy lunch time digesting.

Once again, I got carried away with a response to a blog post, and decided to expound on it.  I am sure this counts as real business right?

Newsweek’s Budget Travel has a great article about TripAdvisor trying to deal with the long coming revelation that many of their users and reviews are not legitimate.  This is, frankly, a huge blow to the site, and should pose a happy problem in it’s early adolescence as they deal with all the changes that come along with growing into adulthood.  Frankly, I am thrilled that this may provoke User Generated Content sites to seek the same verification model other sites have.

At any rate, this is vital to all of us, and it recalls some of my previous post (which I seem to mention once or twice):

You know I am skeptical of social media, whether speaking of Facebook’s lack of meaningful interaction, or Flickr’s nebulous TOS.  In general, I have had major concerns since my yelp research project, and resulting thoughts on ethics in social media. I had even mentioned in January that Yelp should consider verification processes.

One scotch fueled evening my jocular side protruded a wee bit and I became a prankster. To be honest it wasn’t to learn the lesson I did, rather just good fun.  I speak of the Ryan Air Twitter spoof of mine, which got considerable attention in traditional media (namely because Ryan Air claimed @ryanaironline was their account).  It  helped me realize that there is a grave concern for brands and trademarks, and both (more…)

I was ranting and raving about not being able to keep structure or organization with social media, so I took some time to find some useful programs to help me out.   Well…. this is pretty cut and dry:    A quick, succinct post for you to be made aware of (and yet another onslaught from) useful social media tools.  Social Media is simply a tool in itself… so they are tools for tools.  With some of my friends’ more sophomoric moments of wit… they might suggest including myself would make it a third tool.  =)

A list of 10 tools that you might know of, or might not.  As many of these lists go you will likely act as I do…. Stoic, dismissive, and blase…  I will find myself say, “I know all these already,” ……. and then (more…)

Okay so I am really frustrated.  Well… that’s dramatic.  I am more confused, and too busy to gesticulate in the air and ask this question to the windows and fluttering leaves outside my office…. what in the hell is the point of Facebook for a hotel brand anyway??  I think a lot of people are using the Pareto Principle to organize their time in “doing” social media, as suggested earlier last week *here*.  I was going to try and find all the examples I have run into in the last year, but instead offer into evidence exhibit “B” – that time management is a very impacting conversation mentioned over and over because we are so dang busy and REALLY want to figure out what is important, and what isn’t.  So what’s important about Facebook?  Frankly, I am starting to lose my enthusiasm, especially since (more…)