Hraba Hospitality Consulting

There is sudden, endless interest on how to instill the labour for a social media person on the property level of a hotel.  But if you look back in my posts, you will be reminded that hotels are not technological innovators, and are typically behind the curve.  Nothing to be ashamed of, as we aren’t in the technology business.  We are the hotel business.  Sometimes, however, it feels like we have been co-opted (Some of us still remember punch card days).

Until we end up back in the “guest ledger on a lazy Susan” days, much of this “social” or “new” media is being thrust toward the marketing and PR firms of hotels, and they are panicked looking for measurable impressions, calculable effect, and readying themselves to be in control of a massive and daunting visual display of graphs, charts, and quantified data.

But data is not readily available, and measurements are confounding at best (Just because we have become comfortable with a tool of measuring impact of dollars spent, doesn’t mean it’s flawless.  For this reason, I still suspect print measurement).

In the end I think “ROI” conversations will fall by the wayside as properties recognize that you simply need to be part of the conversation.  It will be like a “internet concierge”, and just part of your overall labour budget.

Back to the PR people.

It is damning for marketing groups however, because in a world of too much information these poor people just became responsible for so much more – keywords, tags, blogs, videos, user generated content, etc.  Frankly, keeping up with my google alerts is a job within itself.  So I have a empathic concern for marketing groups that will have to hire some Gen Y kid just to watch the stream of internet consciousness…. It is confusing, and overwhelming.  Learning to not waste your time with some, while being hyper-aware of other data… this is the ultimate experience of separating the wheat and chaff, as well as looking for a needle in a haystack the entire time.

New Media and old Marketing have about as much in common as <insert witty dichotomy>, but these companies are still tagged with the responsibility of following this new stream of information.  It is like when a F&B manager is fired, the floor manager fills in the F&B Manager spot… and then what do you have?  You have a floor manager (someone skilled at a specific job) acting as an F&B manager (a totally different job)… you haven’t increased the floor managers salary (limiting incentive to fill the role), but that person becomes taxed/stressed and is doing a job outside their experience level or role.  Such is the path of social media being slopped on top of traditional marketing firms responsibilities.

Until hoteliers, operators, marketing teams, and ownership step back, recognize what social media is, and implement someone who is meant to grow into the role and focus on the online concierge aspects of web 2.0…. owners will be anxious, marketing groups will be taxed and confused, and hotel management will be nervous.

Social media is not Marketing & PR the same way college degrees or public relations have prepared people for.  Giving the job to someone that doesn’t understand it in the hopes of being successful with a campaign, while performing on the job training, is dangerous and we need to move past it.

At least, let’s let them focus on their skill set, while allowing already operating members of the social media conversation to fill in as “online concierge”.  Traditional marketing and PR is changing, but it will never go away.  It will be in flux for some time, and might put a new notch in the belt buckle, but it will always be necessary and vital.  It won’t be, however, the long term mitigator of social media.  This is a slapdash approach to new media, and in time it will move to a property level, corporate/property specific job.

What’s more is that this is an exciting moment in hospitality.  This is new job forming!  How often does that happen?  We have been skilled at getting rid of the labour pool for years (just think of the last time you saw an elevator operator or shoe shine booth).  This new position will be a customer relations specialist , and will be filled by erudite, excited, savvy people that have hospitality’s core beliefs at their forefront:  Be aware of the guests needs, and service them based on those needs.  Whether they are in front of you or not is irrelevant.  It isn’t about controlling your brand, damage control, or PR.  It is about earnest concern about a guest’s reactions, needs, or thoughts.  It is about being real in your conversation with a guest, precisely what much of marketing is not.  To be fair, at least we can lighten the load on these confused firms that overreact to one bad review, or panic because they still don’t “get” twitter.

I look at this as a great opportunity for hotels to transcend the limiting mentality that web 2.0 is all marketing and PR.  It is daunting to be sure, but it is also humbling, fulfilling, and vital to the ethos of your brand, and the core of your offerings.

It’s time to get hip, and it’s time to be real.

I have already experienced with a few hotels a blase attitude towards peer reviews because it is “simply a place for people to bitch”, or “whiner central”.  Many hotels have a wait and see attitude about social media, and many are as cantankerous and defensive as…. well… the industry has typically been when regarding technological or social advancement.  We were one of the last industry’s to go wireless, and we were also one of the last to enforce a “no beard” policy.

An aside about the hotel industry if I may:

Industry wide, we are not adapters… nor are we pioneers.  One of the most respected men I know in the industry told me an old industry joke:  “Pioneers were shot in the back.”

ROI is hard to justify when it comes to pioneering new technology that is buggy and will probably fail.  Anyone ever had to rip out faulty construction three days before opening will attest trying the “newer” tech isn’t always the “safest” tech.  And don’t get talking to me about radiant flooring used in commercial hotel projects.  Ugh.

So, it has been hotels standard operating procedure to do the following:

Wait for some other “idiot” (said endearingly) to pioneer the tech.  Let *that* person waste all their money trying it, figuring it out, and then fixing it when it breaks.

After 6 months, you take what they did, *AND WHAT THEY LEARNED*, and do it right, better, and cheaper.

This is a fail safe business plan to be sure, but it does backfire.

So back to the current state of things, IE Hotels Backfiring.  If you are a hotel and don’t get social media peruse the below.

Hotels seem to have a somewhat guarded and defensive approach to social media.  Even the wise properties that are innovative, internet aware, and with strong marketing teams… they are at times LOST.  Scared that their old marketing trends are dying, and now their rolodex and contacts and college degree are quickly becoming a vestige, or worse… irrelevant (that is marketing degrees are now sort of moot if you were in school over 5 years ago.  Yeah it hurts, I am getting old as well). I am not so quick to think it isn’t of merit… but it will take some fixing to get old marketers communicating with new marketers.  It is like the dorky book scientist that needs to explain his innovation to the public but cannot find a simple way to describe what a “Differential Microwave Radiometer”* does.

So… we have hotels looking at social media as a compartmentalized outlet for people to bitch about something with other bitchers (pardon the colloquialistic expression… just imagine you are at one of those managers meetings during a lunch hour with those “types”… you know?).

But it isn’t that.  Well it is.  Actually.  Just look at my previous post.  Sure I attack the consumer, but I must take a swing at the stodgy old hotelier once inawhile too.

Social media is a vital tool for a couple reasons.  One is that you can retroactively “hear” consumers and respond, both directly to them and about the situation.  How you respond is up to you…. like employees fishing comment cards out of the box and ripping up the ones with their name (saw it happen, never did it), or getting these comments to the department heads: GM for serious issues, Rooms for cleanliness issues, Maintenance for broken hooks, etc.  It can actually help you run your business, sure!

But what is more important is where it is taking your brand, and what being aware of social media can do for your brand in the coming 100 years.  Reidentifying, repurposing, and shifting your old brand (that was pushed through old media efforts) into this new world of anti-marketing and all advertising becoming spam.

The upshot is that you can reorganize your business into something with purpose, meaning, ethos, and intent.  Instead of pushing a terrible product (no offense, anyways I mean the other guy reading this) on people with glam marketing tactics like direct mail pieces and flashy billboards (that was tongue in cheek), you reorganize your structure to understand and yield to consumer demand and interest.

Finally, that one human to one human connection exists between social reviewer and business.  When you start seeing how the new market works, and how the new consumer handles businesses (in this case a hotel) you will be able to go from pushing your product, to listening, learning and then packaging your product into something not so much “sellable”, as something highly “DESIRABLE”.

Force fed consumers are a thing of the past, and now consumers create individuality with their demand for quality products to endorse.  People are empty vessels to fill with your brand if they so identify or appreciate the intent behind it.

Realize this.  It isn’t about selling a product anymore.  It is about creating a product people want.

When your brand / hotel / business stops pushing itself on a million people that don’t care about you, and really listening to the 1000′s that do… and modeling yourself to the market…. is when you will start being successful in this post-advert world.

(* a microwave instrument that would map variations / anisotropies in the CMB)

Rupert Murdoch.  Interesting character.  Constantly and sytematically attempting to allter new media to mimick older media so he can control it… because… he can’t. 

Not anymore. 

New media trumps who he is and what he represents… control and money.

Neither are immediately obvious with new media.  All these old style marketers are panicking because you need to be *real*, and kind, and maternal and proactive with your brand… truly believing in it, rather than simply controlling it.

It is interesting to see old marketing people panicking on the side of the road as this new “permission marketing” model and brand awareness travels on a new highway.

Just a thought.  Hi bye!

[WARNING:  DISGUSTING CYNICISM AHEAD.  I JUST TALK ABOUT IT TO MAKE IT AS TRANSPARENT AS POSSIBLE]

It might be the most important marketing tool in the history of business.  This is what I would like to talk about.  I bailed on facebook a couple months ago as demonstrated here:

http://www.yelp.com/topic/san-francisco-i-just-deleted-my-facebook-account#uGX2fLe0NIteKu_XQVWZhg

http://www.yelp.com/topic/san-francisco-is-facebook-beacon-evil#-NineORULvGb3hM778Ltdg

Well now I need to do it for a couple reasons… one is that it may be killing email.  For real.

http://memebox.com/futureblogger/show/674

http://mashable.com/2007/08/20/facebook-email/

So that is one reason.

But another is because I need to *understand* this thing from a business end.  It is quite rapidly changing so much of business and marketing.

SO…. here I dive deep back into the fray.  I have a couple accounts… one that is for experimenting, one that is me, and one that is a business account.  Here are some things I have noted within the first couple days:

People will friend you because you are a friend of a friend.  This is interesting.  The larger the networks, the better the advertising possibility.  If you could successfully get the contact list of a successful facebooker, the leverage there would be astonishing.  I assume, at some point, you will hear of facebookers selling their contact list to a corporation.  Very unethical, very under the table, and it might have already happened.  Think about the Obama page.

Speaking of Obama, Facebook groups as well as the newer facebook pages are INCREDIBLE.  The marketing potential behind those are epic, and get into a philisophical conversation (more on that soon). I note that many hotels or groups have pages and groups on facebook.  Both are incredible, because it offers an opportunity to directly connect to consumers who *WANT* to be branded.

It is astonishing the level of transparency in regards to consumers… the fact is that advertising is almost expected and welcomed as long as it is witty, impacting, and earnest with its effectiveness while being self aware.  But this leads to a remarkable issue.

Marketing took this default position in the past as creating a rift… or as marketers like to say “need”.  The idea was to create this imperative need in someone, so much so that they might feel less human or capable of competing in their social circle without said product.  Whether it is targeted at the insecurity of growing old, or filling our technolust driven by the marketing machine….  marketing was dehumanizing and robbed people of self worth.  I strongly believe this to this day, but now things are changing.  I am not saying that it grants reprieve to the cynicism embedded in any job that starts with “here… convince people they want this”, but I am saying that it has flip flopped.

The individual is only defined by the brands it wears on its social page.  People define themselves with branding and marketing.  People squirm in their own skin and rejoice at the opportunity to wear Dior, or Persol, or Chanel.  People are voracious to prove they are cool with buttons, patches, labels, logos, and advertising.  Even if it is some modern pop culture subgroup like hipsters or burners, they wear their anti-brand as a brand.  It gets co-opted to a significant degree.  There is a moment you cannot tell if you are talking to someone who started a trend in response to the dehumanizing consumerism, or if they are the response to the marketing trends of consumerism co-opting an explicitly regurgitating this trend.  It has happened with jazz vipers, hippies, punks, and so on.

The startling issue is that the majority of consumers are no longer passively accepting marketing like a car whizzing past a route 66 staggered billboard  ad campaign

The aspect of modern marketing being that consumers are endorsers for your product or brand… WILLINGLY wearing this as if it were an emblem on their clothing.  The Generation Z kids are not only “me me me”, but they are quite willing to leverage their “individuality” for the opportunity to be memetic “endorsers” of products and brands.  Think about that….

The facebook user becomes nothing more than an empty vessel to fill with your marketing efforts.  There is a certain point that the user is solely defined by their brand loyalty that they constantly advertise.  Whether they review a restaurant on yelp, buy something on Amazon, listen to something on Pandora, etc….

It is fascinating, and incredibly important.  In university, my degree in communication went into the idea that information is somewhat autonomous, and the information is the meme, while the human body simply a vessel to transmit these memes.

Think of that…. that information is what is truly alive.  In this sense, brands are what are memetic.  In fact everything is a brand… your name, your facebook or yelp account.  It all ends up representing you and reflecting on you… and people carry this brand image of who *you* are with them.  But what astonished me is that this ethereal, subjective theory could be viable.  I just thought it was something chatted up in dimly lit rooms at 3am over a smoky haze of forced intellectualism.

If facebook (as well as the users themselves through passive acceptance) turns users into “endorsers” or walking billboards (http://www.linkedin.com/answers/marketing-sales/advertising-promotion/advertising/MAR_ADP_ADV/126511-10096762?goback=.ahp), it will be an interesting commentary on what creates our individualism. Are we willfully decieving ourselves into thinking, antithetical to Fugazi’s “You are not what you own” line, what brands we consume is what defines our individuality?

Or is it too late?

We will be happy and focused on the 10 people we know and are happy vacation photos, while all this meta-marketing and meta-advertising is loosely orchestrated in a way that we aren’t even paying attention to.  We will live and die, our facebook profiles will go dormant…

But in 10,000 years, someone might purchase something at Nordstrom’s due to your review.  Or possibly buy Chanel sunglasses because on your spring break you looked… oh…….so…. chic.

Shit Bill Hicks was right.