Hraba Hospitality Consulting

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…)

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…)

Here is something incredibly important, and widely overlooked, by businesses big and small.

It is great to be sailing, right?  Lovely 13 knots, gliding along water that looks like glass. But where are you going?  What is your destination?  I know, as it is so often stated, that it is about the journey, not the destination. Sometimes, however, you need to prepare for the course and what provisions are necessary to get where you are going.

These are questions I don’t ask myself very often, and are something I think many of us overlook in our panic to check 3 voicemails and 5 email accounts, twitter, facebook, ad naseoum.

So…. Where are *YOU* going? Where is your company — from a business of thousands to a (more…)

Remember being a young buck in the industry?  Remember when they didn’t have solitaire, or even windows based PMS?  Standing at the desk in an empty lobby gazing into nowhere, or on the overnight sneaking away from the desk to create a makeshift sandwich from the walk in?  Remember thinking you always did more work than managers?  I consider myself a pretty nice guy; amicable, easy, and good at communicating with almost everyone.  But there was a manager or two… I would find myself muttering things under my breath.  Bad things.

But as a manager, my ears became bionic.  I think they would *actually* curve towards the direction of the whispers or furtive eyes having a (more…)

My blog posts run aggressively long at times.  So… I gave the instructions and “how-to” in the last post, but all you skeptics might want a “WHY” section to refer to…. and we shall call this the “meat” of the discussion.  As I have made it late to lunch due to this post, it will not only entice me to end it, but will provide the bulk of the point of this discussion.

The reason this is important for business:

The more places we are active online, and the more places we exist online, helps us significantly. The more places we are talked about or our media is represented, the more relevant our brand and hotel is online, and the higher we will be ranked in search engines.

Search engines are changing and will be looking for content (media, graphics, organic conversation) and normal “keyword indexing” will be at the back of the bus. So as these changes start happening, we need to increase our online footprint as much as possible to grab as much “land” online before our competitors do. It is like the Oklahoma Sooners…those first to arrive ended up with the most land. Land in this case is content… personal photos on personal accounts (FB, flickr, shutterfly, etc) that casually mention work, or personal twitter accounts that engage people in conversation about your brand, or professional accounts for work. If guests, meeting planners, restaurant clients all post photos on their personal Flickr accounts, or youtube videos of their stays, or review (good or bad) on sites…. it benefits us greatly. The more content we have online, the more relevant we become. I know it seems like a lot of content, often empty or meaningless, but the more content the wider our footprint will be.

So get to it! =) Don’t hesitate to shout or scream or bemusedly confusedly ask questions. I am happy to talk about it, and today something clicked in on how important it is for EVERYONE to be talking about the brand or hotel, not just the social media guy. One smart person is good to get the ball rolling, but it takes the help of a whole network to get it up that hill.

Go.. learn… experiment.. have fun.  The online world has forever impacted our business, and it promises to get even weirder.  When these search engines start engaging content and media more than before…. successfull SEO will be a minour part of the overall picture.  So go create an account or two!

Some relevant articles to this discussion?

Brands in searching saving the internet from being the “cesspool” it is:
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/10/08/this-cesspool-we-call-the-internet

This is a link to my blog, but it has some great “future of SEO” articles:
http://www.hrabaconsulting.com/blog/2009/01/23/keywords-will-step-to-the-back-of-the-search-engine-line-or-how-consumers-will-find-hotels-in-the-future/

Seriously…. panic!  Panic now!

Okay calm down and chill out.  It really doesn’t help.  Actually my mantra is quite lazily swiped from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:  “DON’T PANIC”.  I can’t tell you how often that phrase helped during bomb threats, broken water mains, or total service meltdowns in opening periods…..

*But* I have your attention.  It’s devious to be sure, but you’re here and you might like this.

As you are calming down, I will help raise your eyebrow a bit, and possibly the bar.  This isn’t the limbo… so we will hopefully bring it up so that everyone can pass through! No, it is not the kind of bar you wished it to be.  You will need to find that later in the day.

We hotel social media people are all over it!  The internet that is.  We are in a lot of places online.  Frankly we are everywhere and it wears us out.  Following yellow page sites like citysearch and yellobot, following customer generated reviews on multiple hotel outlet pages with sites like TripAdvisor, Zagat, or Yelp.  We have multiple Twitter accounts, facebook pages, blogs, myspace, and more.  We have RSS feeds creating feedback loops of brand info!

Simply…. we are doing our job for the company, as rapidly as that is being defined.

But more and more I notice something.  Most corporate offices are totally clueless.  They are years away from this.  Many are catching on, starting to get it, almost there.  Even the corporate offices with visionary ownership – far ahead of the game – fall a bit short in that they understand that social media is important, vital, and very much the “here and now” of grassroots word of mouth, but aren’t completely utilizing the tools yet.  At times it feel as if there is a self satisfaction in having that “one online guy” managing things, so they can tell their other industry pals, “We’re on it.  We are relevant, fresh, and in the know!”

Sipping of Arnold Palmer’s then reverbrates in the lounge air with a smug sense of management being hip (Actually, that is usually me with the Arnold Palmer). I am fairly lucky this isn’t my case and it is hyperbole to be sure, but you catch my drift.  The point is that it’s so new a “tool” (for lack of a better term) there is a strong likelihood there will be communication problems at the beginning, the learning curve will be great, and making people aware of it will be very difficult.

If you believe in the brand you work for, it is your cross to bear.

The difficulty is bridging that gap, and helping people grasp it’s importance.  What is happening with social media, search indexing, and brand positioning is going to alter *everything* in the next couple years for the internet.  Quick article *here* However it so new I am not sure people are fully grasping this “thing”, beyond the hip and organized ones that are currently shuffling their social media guy into a room and praying that that person does a good job (so they no longer have to worry about the “annoying reviewers”)….

It isn’t the “be all and end all”, it isn’t a religion… but it is vitally important, much bigger than one person, and hopefully this ramble will help you will see why.

Ownership, management, and most employees are lost on it, understandably so.  Social Media is an overwhelming place of daunting content and endless snide reviews….  but we “SMO” were put here to build a base for the brand’s social media presence, and that is much more than just hiring someone to do the job and ignoring them.  It is allowing the SMO to interact with employees and help reinforce what social media is and does.  This is a position that will not only be a property level position at some point, but it will be a respected manager training and helping other staff to get on board and help the hotel.  Ehhh… possibly (Feynman said fence sitting is an art)

Most hotels with social media campaigns do not alert guests to it, often forgetting to mention it if it comes up. Often it is because employees don’t know about it, or sometimes because it just aggravates them.  You have all heard of it, probably been inundated by it and confused by it, which is often times why people just ignore it. But it is vital we talk about the lack of connection between the campaign and employees on property level, and why there needs to be more interaction than “yeah we have a guy doing it”.

How do you start this interaction?  My advice is to find any and every employee property level that “gets” social media, is into it, and might have fun with it.  In fact, many of your SMO’s already see some employees online while performing their job tasks… you know those employees online a bit more often than they might need to be?  That is where you start…. it’s that simple!

People are concerned about their employees talking about them online, but that concern should be obsolete!  You shouldn’t worry about it… THEY ALREADY ARE TALKING ABOUT YOU!  You couldn’t stop them if you wanted to, so it is wise to reinforce that your brand is online, they are representing it… and anything they can do to help will be appreciated!

Then start talking to those who might be interested in increasing sales leads, contacts, and bookings.. no doubt there is a savvy sales agent already hammering away on facebook all day.  Why not extend that into a professional sales page that they link a twitter account to?  Then you have networking for the sales agent, and brand presence for the hotel!  The more of these sort of interactions, the better!

Your tech guy might already be there, but if I know hotel A/V and IT people… they are way too busy to actually *do* social media.  But remind them they could use it to keep informed about current trends and products they can geek out to, as well as ask questions to quickly resolve conundrums.  Maintenance could use it in the same way as well.  When all your people have accounts up and running, think how convenient it would be for a guest to twitter engineering about a burnt out lightbulb, or a Wireless point that is down?

Starting to wrap up this ramble!

SO – the social media guy can handle a property level account for twitter, a facebook page, a blog, and more… constantly cross posting and getting the word out, but it takes more than that to increase your online footprint.  You want sales people talking sales, and tech people talking tech… you want all the employees connecting with other hotels and hospitality employees, as well as to other guests and clients. You want people commenting on blogs about the hotel where applicable, and talking about it on their own.  You want people posting their pics and videos.  You want your brand to be bolstered by thousands… not just one social media guru locked in a windowless room in a cage.

BUT WHY?  WHY ON EARTH IS THIS ACTUALLY A USEFUL BUSINESS TOOL?

Well … this post was so bloody long we will save the meat for the next post.  It will make sense.  I promise!

Social Media is one of the more important tools for business in a long time.  But there are those that sort of treat it like a cult or religion.  I am doing my best not to get sucked into that wormhole.  I note that when I do, all the other operating world seems distant and out of touch, when it is in fact that I am residing inside my little bubble and missing 90% of what the business world is doing.  This is an exagerration to say the least, but I note that some people compartmentalize their lives into this spectrum of “those using social media” and “those not using social media”.  Then a lovely dichotomy breaks:  the hip 2.0 social media crowd scoffing at the archaic and obsolete approach of baby boomers and more classically trained business crowd; while the old timers think of social media as zero productivity game playing used by capricious facebook generation kids. 

It is the nature of our polarizing culture, and the either “this or that” mentality we automatically separate things into.  To make it easier to digest: 

1) You young judgmental whippersnappers!  Remember that there has been business successfully run for thousands of years, and it will happen in other ways 1000′s of years after now.  This isn’t the be all end all, it is simply something that is useful to *DO* business.  In itself, it is *NOT* business…. and the problem with monetizing these networking sites and creating profitability is of paramount concern to keep these tools alive.  Why put all your eggs in one basket when the business model is completely unsound?

2) You old crotchety types that don’t get it! Just because you have done business without it for decades doesn’t mean you don’t need to start now.  You are losing leads, sales, networking, potential opportunities… all this and more by ignoring it.  It isn’t a church, it isn’t a video game… it is just another tool to sit aside your traditional rolodex.  But just because it is foreign doesn’t mean you can ignore it.  Ignoring it will cost you business in some capacity, be it an actual sale to long term branding and presence.

It comes down to needing to be aware of it and how it can be used, coupled with knowing it has some serious critical faults that are going to come around and haunt these people that have adopted it like a cult.

It’s like when I help build and open a property….

You look for critical flaws while building.  If you miss it, or smart people ignore it, then you keep building and doing what you need to do.  You keep “doing” business.  You open the property, you launch the website. 

The problem is when it is supposed to be at its peak and functioning its best… when everyone is excited and bought into it (opening day)…. that is when the critical flaw comes crashing down and you have to rip out an HVAC system or jackhammer leaking radiant heating in a concrete floor.  Or… build a network so effectively strong that it is too big to scale to and support.

Whether there is a problem or not, you still need to maintain and finish business.  Ignoring a problem, or opportunity, will just come back in the end and bite ya back.

There is a critical flaw in social media that will come crashing down, possibly.  It is best to be aware of it and know how to do business the right way, as well as the modern way.  Some people even think social media *is* business (I would say it helps business).  But that may beg a larger commentary on our modern working world:

I think a lot of people aren’t sure how to do business the right way.  That is a critical flaw that doesn’t even involve social media.  =)