Hraba Hospitality Consulting

Another Class Action Lawsuit for Yelp!

Enjoy the TechCrunch article… and always, always, always enjoy the commentary.  I find it interesting if not hilarious.  If it isn’t hilarious enough for you, check out the comment section of this blog post, where it basically proves Facebook users are clueless (or 4chan had a blast acting like a mischievous army, once again).

Yelp seems to be taking this situation seriously though; umm….enough to post a Craigslist ad for legal counsel.  I would imagine there are better ways to hire lawyers than CL, but hey, just says a lot about the management that got them into this mess.

But these cries of extortion… once again… are more about bad management than out and out unethical behaviour.  There is no way these suits will be able to prove the “WE WILL DELETE A REVIEW FOR YOU” concept, because I don’t think it has ever happened; if it has, I doubt anyone has gotten a record of it as fact.  Someone would have proof by now… a recorded call, etc.  Admittedly, these guys at Yelp are from Paypal, and they know not to be sending privy or damaging info across email, etc…. but I still doubt something like that is going on.  It’s more likely confusion on the level of businesses not getting what is happening with the algorithm, as well as the dubious (but not out and out unethical) “move the best review to the top” program, that seems to confuse a lot of people.  This is more about business owner’s lack of understanding about social media, and Yelp’s apparent incapacity to clarify just how their algorithm works.

Using the algorithm as an excuse is not a wise move – blaming the foundation of their business opens them up to scrutiny.  By blaming the process of your sorting model, there will be more curiosity as to how it works.  Until people can trust that algorithm without question, their entire model will be extremely unstable.  Regardless of proprietary, privileged information, it jeopardizes their ability to be viable and dealt with as ethical business people.  Of course, the bungled Google deal and whatever really happened there (it’s all speculation) might offer a small window into their world.  Theories abound that Yelp was lying to Google, leaking information, and fabricating higher offers from unnamed suitors.  Yelp walking on this deal doesn’t make as much sense as Google calling their bluff, but logic doesn’t always figure into business dealings.  All in all… Google knows how to negotiate, and they were “rattled” by Yelp’s lack of transparency…. seemingly a theme for Yelp.

All they need to do is be open about their algorithm, and it will bolster and gel their business model.  I am sure there would be growing pains with being that open, but it would pave the way to have a stronger, vetted business that actually has trust from other people.  Until then, their algorithm nonsense will be the blood in the water that keeps the sharks (lawyers & lawsuits) coming back…

As the solution to their issues seem obvious, it starts to beg the question whether Yelp really has something to hide.  Without being conspiratorial, it isn’t that much of a logical leap that they are concerned about *something* – whether there are significant flaws in the algorithm, or they have work arounds that allow you to disregard specific aspects of it.  Frankly I don’t like conspiracy theories; people are typically not intelligent enough to orchestrate massive lies involving endless people that agree to keep secrets without being morally challenged.  Our government can’t, big businesses can’t…. why should a web 2.0 startup be able to get this far?  If moralistic heart strings being tugged isn’t enough, money talks… and one of the employees would have blown the whistle for their future book deal and fame, at this point.

However, if they ever get caught jockeying reviews under the guise of their algorithmic mistakes, Yelp will be *decimated*…. but I can’t imagine that ever happening.  What might happen is that serious flaws in the algorithm get noted, and short term it will seriously hurt them.  Depending on how they handle this fictional problem, it won’t likely be a Yelp killer.  However, watching Toyota deal with public fallout, it never ceases to amaze me how business’ often choose to ignore history and good sense.  What’s more, Yelp is a leader in flipping the marketing model and giving consumers a voice, taking a business’ ability to control damage with PR and spin.  Yelp is acting exactly like the companies that they are helping expose… you can’t be secretive, you can’t market your mistakes away…. if any business should understand this, it’s Yelp.  If you aren’t ethical, or don’t operate with the best of intentions… the public has ways of exposing that.  It’s humorous, and possibly ironic, that Yelp is caught in a trap of their own making.

I love seeing unethical people getting brought down, but I just don’t see this as mitigated behavior so much as foolish bungling, something I touched on before in this article.

People who don’t understand what Yelp is offering endlessly cry about the review site’s shifty ways… but Yelp’s program for advertising isn’t that nebulous.  The $300, $500, $1000 plans get you “impressions”…. those lightly highlighted/colored ads at the top of searches on yelp.  You also get a “slideshow” style picture gallery which is pretty meaningless, and you get to pick your favorite review to automatically appear at the top.  It says, “this is the company’s favorite review” and it’s fairly obvious when people are sponsors.  Most of the worthwhile aspects of managing the business owners accounts on yelp have nothing to do with their advertising options, by the way.  It is a valuable tool and can help you listen, learn and grow…. but you don’t need to pay yelp for any real reason.  For most businesses I doubt it makes sense at all; I don’t get it for a flower shop or bakery, etc…. there is no return on investment, so those constant calls they must be getting are annoying, to be sure.  But I still don’t think there is some devious plot going on…. I have spoken to at least 5 different account managers in different markets who try to get me to advertise, and none have pulled any unethical behavior beyond being ENDLESSLY annoying.

I still prefer google adwords, but if you are already doing those it might not be a bad idea, depending on your business.  Think about it from a hotel’s perspective – If I choose to pay $1000 a month from our marketing budget (which has moved online from print media), that means I get something like 4800 impressions (aka a banner ad that a consumer may or may not see due to “banner blindness”… I mean, I don’t see those ads at all, frankly).  If our average daily rate is $500, that means I literally have to pluck one person for two nights out of the 4800 impressions to cover the cost of advertising with yelp.  It actually is sort of a slam dunk, in that sense.

I just can’t convince old school marketers who are scared of losing the message, and not controlling the brand, due to sites like this.  What’s more, Yelp is only successful in SF Bay and a couple other markets.. barely.  Boston, LA, Chicago, NY seem to be okay… but even social media savvy Portland and Seattle aren’t that strong a market at all.

Look at open table reviews vs. yelp reviews in other markets…. opentable reviews which are verified and confirmed from a reservation are much more common than yelp reviews outside of the SF market.  One of our fine dining restaurants in the Portland area has 2 reviews on yelp, and over 200 on open table.  That speaks volumes.

But in the end…. it’s all bad press, and it douses their equity every time this happens.  I can’t help but wonder why they allow this to continue unabated?

Social media is supposed to be about transparency and Yelp is failing at that…. massively.  Everyone thinks Yelp is some immutable, immovable behemoth, but people moved from Myspace to Facebook in less than a couple months.  Youtube is less than 5 years old, and Facebook is less than 3 1/2 years old..  Yelp needs to recognize that their high horse isn’t that high.  The basic upshot is that this is all very young.  I think it’s interesting tho… all of it… which is why I am rambling here to all of you.  This will all be sorted out within a couple years, I am sure.

Do you guys think this is more about confusion from the companies themselves, or do you really think yelp is committing some expertly maintained conspiracy?  What are your thoughts on the future of online reviewing?

A professional acquaintance and I were communicating today about the odd nature of social media in regards to “friending”, and navigating the tightrope that is personal and professional.  Social Media and Online Communication are still very young, and it is still learning to become the “metaverse” Stephenson conjectured, or at least fantastical replication of the physical world.  As it starts to more accurately and efficiently replicate tangible existence, we will see a new vision of a social platform – something that is capable of being augmented, and adapatable enough for the most diverse of us. For now, we have the frustrating complexity of navigating our professional selves, and awkwardly surrendering our personal lives in lieu of building a professional network.

The question she asked was “How do you decide who to friend when someone finds your profile off of the page you administer?”

This is, truly, a billion dollar question.  The online world is slowly revealing itself to be a simulacrum of the real world…. whereas MySpace’s vague and anonymous profiles caused confusion and apprehension, FB verification process through jobs and schools creates a more acceptable legitimacy in regards to the “realness” of a person.  If the person tried to build a “fake” profile, it would sort of become irrelevant because there were no real world connections to make.  That poses a problem for the more diverse of us.  I note Twitter facilitates the need to compartmentalize interests, hobbies, characters, etc…. I have multiple twitter accounts – one for my music and DJ’ing, one for art and science, one for biz, and so on.  The nature of communication is that we compartmentalize these interests, so we aren’t talking about the new museum to a hotel person, or the renovation of a hotel to someone who like to listen to music.  It’s vital – it’s who we are, and how we do biz.  At the very least, there needs to be a separation of professional life and work life.

This is where FB really lets me down.  Originally I had two profiles… my main normal one professionally (networking and managing pages), and a goofy one for all my closer friends, music/art/SF scene friends.  I soon realized it is literally impossible to juggle between the two accounts, let my alt-profile go dormant, and now I am simply an open book on my main profile.  I use it however I wish, post whatever I wish… all the while accepting professional peers as friends.  If they like my personal stream, that is fine – if not, they will unfriend.  But I note, for my own mental sanity, that I couldn’t possibly keep up to speed with trying to maintain two FB profiles, all the FB pages… and figuring out what interaction happened where.

So I ditched that alternate profile, and it has been incredibly freeing.  1) FB is not like twitter… it is a closed social network.  What is odd about that is that people don’t seem to want a closed social network in regards to their friends… because they will simply call and chat with them, see them at work or dinner, etc.  People want an open network like twitter, for sharing funny stuff, professional networking, etc.  So I note a lot of people on FB have just become friend junkies and will say yes to whoever might want to be their friend, simply to expand the network and ability for meaningful interaction.

I doubt you insulted anyone… most likely it is another Oregon local just trying to expand their network.

Whatever the case… this is a widely spoken about… you are not alone.  I think Twitter “gets it”, and Linked In sort of gets it.  There isn’t that much interaction there, but it is a valuable tool in conjunction with FB, at this point.

However, I think someone is going to soon create a tool/medium that allows you to truly compartmentalize these personna…. and create alternate profiles, conversations, etc within one network.  The person that figures out how I can post some inappropriately irreverent and sardonic nonsense on one part of my profile, and professional news and tidbits on another, while posting a video or new mix on my other “side” – that person is going to make a lot of money.

Google Wave could be a start to this.  I just realized something… Facebook would be able to adapt to this, but I am not innovative enough to figure out how Twitter to handle this sort of shift in friend management.  Whatever the case, pardon my afternoon verbosity.  The sun is hitting the office window and for some reason I just caught fire. =)

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 people might have a concern in regards to this?  How about: mom and pops, small innkeepers, non branded or flagged properties that don’t have a mega-marketing budget to leverage every site, and I could go on.  I know it’s only $500, but it adds up…. and if they were to really go through with this I assume it would be irrevocably damaging to their long term credibility.  Even Yelp has tiptoed around ethics issues with business owners, review manipulation, etc – but haven’t done something this obvious.  Of course, the question is:  In their quest to monetize, will TripAdvisor risk their credibility to do so?

Any thoughts?  Is it that big a deal?  Would it create an unfair gap between “haves” and “have nots”, or is TripAdvisor supplying link and phone info moot, because guests will call the hotel directly anyway?

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 unnoticed (for good or bad).  In a down economy they just become a little more visible because of their obvious lack of connection or understanding of operations, budgets, etc.  There are some STUNNING marketing firms out there (a little plug for BMC.. the guys are so incredibly together it is refreshing, and astonishing)… and most of those are the ones big enough to admit 1) we are undergoing some major changes, and 2) we have little to no idea what is happening for the time being.  At least… if not hyperbolic relatively based in truth.

“New” marketers talk about getting back in synch, like the old system…. where, apparently, print media showed results.

Frankly.. I am not sure it ever did, and hopefully this new wave of social tools democratizing the guest experience will force the hand of marketing people to stop convincing their consumers that the brand is good…. and instead just focus on “gooding” the brand; making sure the hotel or entity is ethically orchestrating business in a way that will have consumers actively endorse their model and passively advocate it.

It isn’t about convincing people that a product is exceptional.  It’s being exceptional and allowing people to recognize that.  That doesn’t take place with marketing or PR… that takes place from within operations and management. Run a business well.. *then* hand it to marketers.  They might begrudgingly thank you that you just made their job easier.  More and more I see marketers admit with defeat that the message is no longer controllable…. and many don’t have a clue what’s going on.

But don’t worry marketer, most of the industry and business world is that way.  That’s what happens when consumers gain control for the first time in history.

So…

This is a fairly funny, interesting article about the complexity of social ads, and how they can exploit any of your proprietary data for their own ends…. in that you agree it isn’t proprietary anymore by uploading it to the site.  IE:  Complain all you want, but if you are on a social media site, they own you.  Some try to be fairly deferential to the artist’s rights (Flickr, Tribe, etc), but others like Yelp and Facebook seem to have little concern for their single users, and are wholly concerned with users overall (read: business).

That being said, have you heard about any of these wildly incorrect or funny social ad gaffes?

Here are some from Cheryl Smith’s original article:

Husband sees his own wife in a picture for “hot singles”.

Karen said: “Despite having three degrees and no children, I keep getting ads urging ‘Moms’ to ‘go back to school and earn a degree.’”

Rachel said, “none of my friends have come up in dating ads but one of my guy friends – a 20 something with perfect skin, popped up in an ad for a wrinkle cream”

“I saw a Facebook ad that read “Pinecones. In glass. The want is real.” They were advertising just that — pinecones in glass jars. Very odd.”

[The following, I assume, was for a dating ad?] “My picture was posted in an ad for my sister, who then posted a comment in her status on FB, and everyone got to share a great laugh – after a collective: Ewwwww. Cheers!”

“Best one so far was a picture of our church’s pastor next to an ad asking my wife if she were hot enough to be in his sorority!”

These are hilarious… but somewhat frightening.  If you use FB, or most of these sites…. you should simply consider privacy over.  Don’t give up on it, but don’t act shocked.  At least, have a great sense of humour like Cheryl did on her original post.  The fact is – social media is young, and growing.  This will all get hammered out, and someday there will be parity and the new model will synch up.  Until then, please share the weird, wild, or funny things you see or hear about on social media ads!  Cheers!

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 trails & picnic day trips in the area. If you have a nice restaurant, talk about all the local farms you buy from and the guests you have, instead of just putting a discount/special out there. If you have a spa, tell a story about one of the favourite therapists instead of just saying “1/2 off”. If you have meeting rooms to sell…. talk about one of the cool groups that came to the property and why they excited you. Involving more than just yourself will stimulate and open up conversation.  Could I go on?  Obviously… but I am assuming you are getting it.  Social Media is *NOT* a print ad.  It is a relationship, networking, and interaction.  One sided, spam-like deal tweets will only help you get recognized long enough for the people to ignore you.

3) Build a culture and humanity around your property… not just a shallow marketing effort. You need to humanize and personalize your activities online. If you are nothing more than an RSS feed for your hotel, people will walk away.  You need to show you are a real person… so wear your quirks and emotions on your sleeve.  If you are an emotionless robot, people won’t notice you… but if your energy, personality, and even idiosyncrasies, show through… it will truly create a more meaningful and real experience for other users. If you play at the deferential professional being obsequious with no character… that will only reflect on your hotel in a negative light. You need to intone and create a sense of “soft and comfy beds”, rather than sterile hallways littered with emotionless automatons.  Always be professional, but for criminy *BE REAL*!!!!

4) Then…                    after all this….                 you become the Concierge 2.0.  Help anyone and everyone REGARDLESS of whether they are utilizing or recognizing your brand. You cannot be so disingenuous that you will only engage people you think will bring you business. You have to cordially, professionally, and earnestly engage anyone and everyone. Not because you are trying to brand your hotel… but because you are a real service provider that is inherently interested in fulfilling guests, helping the community, and creating harmony in people’s lives.  This isn’t advice…. this is a way of life.

Hospitality is about service, consistency, and making people happy. Don’t make it more complex than that…. Follow that as an ultimate guideline in creating your business online, as well as in the real world. You are there to stay open, pay your employees, and hopefully walk out with a little profit (someday). But the only thing that will keep you there is the community, and the community is filled with living and breathing people that need to be respected and treated with integrity… online and off. If you treat social media as a marketing tool, you are not only going to miss the point, you may actually damage your brand.  But if you are real, engaging, enthusiastic, and humanize your property, you could become indispensable to the people and surroundings of your area.

I know I have been slow on blogs lately… I have a security related blog coming, as well as follow up to my LEED and eco-resort related blog post. In fact, I seem to always have one or two in the wings, but for some reason this caught me. I will repost some of my older blogs that discusses this online concierge method of utilizing social media: “Concierge 2.0”, “What do you say about managers not in the room”, and “Did we Just Create a New Position for Real??”

Cheers all!

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 the businesses & social media sites should have a vested interest in a verification process of brands.  There is a serious risk of hijacking and damaging people and businesses, with inauthentic people (or dim ones not realizing pranks and social media can go viral) damaging a brands reputation.

Social Media is young. FB beat out myspace because it is better at replicating and verifying the real world (although it can’t actually do anything more meaningful than provide a wonderful marketing data gathering opportunity for FB, coupled with a nice phonebook)… but it was verifying that the person was the *reality* based person, which quickly attracted people to it. If you aren’t relevant to any networks, or aren’t genuine… you quickly become invisible.

As user generated review sites follow a similar path, these things will stabilize. It is very young, and still in the myspace period of fake profiles and people… but as twitter adds verification services & FB starts considering verification due to trademark infringement issues with it’s new URL program: , it will be obvious for User Generated Content Sites to authenticate, across the board. I am not sure if open ID and attaching accounts to mobile phones is the simplest way, but if something doesn’t happen quick the sites will implode through sacrificing the only thing that makes their business model feasible.  I am sure Tripadvisor has seen the start of accounts closing due to the breach in ethics.

We will wait until services like Yelp and TripAdvisor grow into the awareness of what they have created.  People sardonically jest “the internet is serious business” when it comes to this sort of stuff.  But it is.  It isn’t just 2.0.  It’s a massively powerful tool that completely reorients the consumer model, putting control into the hands of the people, and out of marketing and PR companies, possibly for the first time in capitalism’s history. The message can no longer be managed, and PR doesn’t work the same way anymore. You are only as strong as the advocates and endorsers that believe in your brand. Ethics is paramount.

The only way for these sites to continue their validity is by echoing the sentiment of their own taglines: Tripadvisor’s “get the truth… and go”, or Yelp’s “real reviews, real people”.  If they commit to intelligently policing their own site by being completely transparent, authentic, accountable, and earnest, they should be able to emerge better than before.. They might need to take a huge dip in registered users, as well as delete a lot of existing content. This open and honest method of dealing with this situation will undoubtedly sacrifice trust in the short term, but it is the only way for a social media site to maintain the trust that they leverage for business.

It will hurt… but this is an opportunity for them to re-organize into a leaner and more valid site than ever before. Most people saw this coming. Let’s hope it isn’t something they try to spin away or ignore… instead of doing what is right and being honest, while doing everything they can to curb the problem.

I admit concern about the idea of having to hire non-revenue generating staff to handle the massive clean up project, and the fact the money simply might not be there to handle it.  However, it is obvious they are quickly responding, like April Robb from Tripadvisor commenting to Christopher Elliott. I do like the warnings they put on some hotels, but it could be markedly arbitrary?

We’ll have to see.

Not sure what age social media is at right now, but it is certainly hitting a painful growth spurt.

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 my eyes humble me by finding an exciting new gem.

1) I am very pleased with Google Voice.  The sheer amount of functionality is not only superb… but it is useful without being daunting.  I do not know if this is public yet, but if you forgot about your own Grand Central account… go ahead and log in, because that is what Google Voice was built on.  Basically, among other things, the real timer saver is voicemail messages that can be both emailed or texted to your phone, and they provide transcripts that are voice to text.  Need to hear the 14th our of 22 voicemails IMMEDIATELY?  Never wait again.  Hell.. just read it.

2)  Flock browser, which I extolled here.  It integrates Digg, Flickr, FB, Youtube, Twitter, Myspace and more into a convenient sidebar… if you like a pic or article,  auto-upload from your sidebar without leaving the webpage.  It has an RSS reader that killed Google reader for me… it has a media bar that is insanely simple to use for download/upload, and I can post blog posts on the fly.  It has saved so much time I cannot even tell you…. it also remembers all accounts, I.E. 6 gmail accounts, 5 flickr, 6 youtube, 3 blog accounts, 2 FB, etc.  Incredible time saving tools there.

3)  As for the managing of multi-twitter accounts, I like twhirl.  I know there are other options, and I am all ears, but for now this provides a simple way to post relevant articles or have conversation thoughout the day from a desktop dashboard environment of multiple accounts.  When they are all grouped, I lose my mind, so I like seperate streams.

4) As for managing twitter accounts, try out TWEEPULAR. Easy bulk follow, bulk unfollow, and more.  Very cool.

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 the stream change I reference right *HERE*.

Whether “Hotel Pages on Facebook” work isn’t a cut and dry question to say the least…. whether they are useful, or whether they are actually hotels to begin with is where we can start.  For example, if you search “Hotel” on Facebook, then filter so that only “pages” appear, the first 3 pages of over 500 results does have a hotel or two, but the majority of pages are for a band, or a page devoted to hating said band, or one of 15+ (I stopped count around 13) of Facebook Pages for the wonderful, if not somewhat antiquated, “HOTEL” board game.  Sure I enjoyed the game too, as you fair readers are just reminded of how much fun it was when you last played.

But this is no longer kid’s play.  This is business… and I want to make sure we are not wasting our time.

Two Important Questions, the latter being more impacting: “WHAT HOTELS ARE USING THEIR FACEBOOK PAGES THE BEST???”… and then the *really* important question….”THOSE HOTELS USING THEIR PAGES THE BEST… *what* *is* *the* *benefit*?”

Basically.. I would love to hear the positive, happy Facebook stories about hotels with groups or pages?  I am at a loss for any real examples of how it is “business”, or can be used effectively.  Like… none.  I know we have to be on FB… there has to be a presence.  But what am I missing guys?  I note this has come up recently, like *HERE*… but there hasn’t been much follow up.

I see people on hotel pages saying “I love your brand/hotel”.  I have also seen people upload a picture here or there.  But I *do not* see anything deeply meaningful or anything really happening (IE commerce, business, or jumps to booking engines, etc).  I know that the restaurants and especially lounges seem to like to use it as a place to update events, etc…. but most of the fans on a page would be previous guests, presumably not locals?  I have always thought hotels should ingratiate itself to the community, but there are only so many events and specials that you can target the community with, as they aren’t going to always be your strongest base or the people the pay the bills.  For brand image you need them happy, but they aren’t your guests.  What’s more, if you do constantly focus on locals… you are missing out on the bread and butter, which is rooms.  It is complex… is the page for a local clientele, for potential guests, for past guests that are part of your culture?  All 3? It’s almost like Hotels focus on the locals not because they *want* to.. but becuase, by default, they *have* to… as they don’t know how to reach others.

I for one haven’t the foggiest how you would get a potential guest to your facebook page, and what’s much, *MUCH* more important… is why?  Why would I want to get a guest to a page without much information, meaningful content, or a booking engine?  Isn’t the potential guest someone we want to end up on our hotel site?  Even the SEO premise is interesting, but if people aren’t searching or using FB to find brands, what’s the point of getting them to your page when they can’t do anything?  What’s more, if a FB page is basically a one sided twitter or RSS feed of brand info, wouldn’t you want your potential guest on your branded site instead of a dead-end of non-interactivity?

So what is the page for?  For now I have a couple things:  brand awareness (news, etc), SEO (your link on FB), contact info, (but FB’ers aren’t using pages as a yellow page, nor are they using it as a resource), events, specials.   Let’s look at some hotels and how they successfully use FB:

Hotel Costes – 25,000 fans, zero wall posts, obviously just a “front” or online billboard.  I think this may be the most effective use of a FB page out there.  Just build a nice page, and walk away.  I hate to be cynical, but it might be the simple best page I have seen, albeit a little tongue in cheek.  I will say that “Hotel Costes” is also famous in the younger scene for having downtempo lounge DJ’s playing, and have an associated line of CDs which may be part of its popularity.  Whatever the case, one of the hotel pages with the most fans, and they aren’t doing anything at all.

Hilton – 21,107 fans, with 8 posts on the wall in the last 14 days.  Those posts are the typical “Hilton is the best,i love it”…  meaning relatively benign, fairly non engaged commentary.  They aren’t posting anything, not even RSS.  I have seen some hotels pull back from posting, as the change FB made has wall posts injecting into people’s conversational stream like spam.  Hoteliers are confused how to handle this, and even I have found brand updates annoying as all get out (and I am the type that is meant to be tolerant of them, being my profession and all).

Hotel Aladdin – I love this example, because they are actually interacting with their 10,000+ fans.  You may not speak Spanish, but you can tell they are updating the wall, and people are actually participating.  So what is this meaningful interaction from a hotel doing a good job with their page?  People thumbs up, IE “Like This”, by clicking on the feed post and that’s about it.  Comments are frequent, but I still don’t see business.  People liking you doesn’t necessarily translate into “time well spent”.  They did have a contest where they gave away 3 rooms, which is a great way to garner attentions and fans… but does it make a booking down the road?

St. Julien – Obviously using the page, as they moderated a question I asked about their page.  They had a Earth Day special that got some attention, and some fans.  However… they got fans on the pretense of planting trees.  People joined, they announced 70 trees in those new fans honor.  But what now?  That first post since the event is about 20% off in the spa.  They have 216 fans right now.  Any wagers on whether the amount of fans goes up or down in the immediate future?  I *assume* new fans will tire of spa ads in their stream and de-fan pretty quick.  Whatever the case, are they spending time that generates business or justifies time spent?  Exactly *who* fans pages right now?  Who fanned St. Julien for that promo – people that wanted a tree planted, or people that wanted to know about the hotel?

HotelChatter mentions some more hotels that have pages, and that are potentially doing interesting things:

Whist at Viceroy Santa Monica with 125 fans is basically sending a dinner offer once a week, and nothing more.

High Peaks Resort, frankly, seems to do everything right when it comes to social media.  As much as their stream looks solid, with 300+ fans, I still wonder what sort of commerce or interaction happens…

The Jane, with 52 fans, hasn’t really posted anything *since* the hotel chatter article.  This isn’t indicative of them doing anything wrong, I simply think it is indicative of no one really knowing how to create meaninful conversation on FB.

I could keep coming up with more pages, but these are simply a couple hotels whose pages have already been chatted about in the social media conversation.  I notice most people aren’t doing anything, when they do it is usually a contest to garner more fans (to what end I am not sure anyone knows) or a special on wine at dinner , etc.  All this just lends itself to a couple points:

1) Social Media is about conversation, which is something I see on very few pages.  On FB, it is basically a one way pushing of information.. deals, news articles etc.  If FB had reviews that could be fused into a page, or some “game” like Hyatt developing one of those “what’s your travel personality” quizzes, it might create better interaction… but very few have the time, money, or justification to do anything like that.

2) Social Media is open, which FB is not – meaning that most of the time, on Flickr or Twitter you can actually have a chance of interacting with potential clients, while FB only has those that already know of your property, IE locals looking for a good deal on wine at dinner.  How many people is that for?  What percentage of fans will be local, and will actually utilize that deal?  Who is your target on FB?  Why is that your target?  What are you attempting to achieve with FB?

In the end -I think that question sort of zinged even myself… “What are you attempting to achieve with FB?”

I for one don’t have a clue.  I just know, even worst case scenario, it’s great to have your link out there in a place with a high page rank.  So that is why I am there, even though why I started was totally different… it was to regale guests, interact with them, create stories and remember moments…. but now, I feel relegated to checking it once in awhile, staring blankly, and then moving on.

I think a lot of hotels set up a page, have absolutely *ZERO* idea how to meaningfully interact with potential guests, and resort to offering locals dinner deals in their restaurant, because there isn’t really a way to reach a prospective client on FB (and don’t get me started on their advertising program… because we know that doesn’t work.  No conversion tracking, Lack of results, users not seeking advertising, and the Social Media Ad Model is broken anyway).  You can only reach people that know about you, and that can act on offers, deals, and last minute specials.  These aren’t clients that provide a powerful revenue stream to your hotel, and often, as we have seen with dropping rates to garner occupancy… the people looking for a deal aren’t really the clients you want anyway.

Are we wasting our time?

I did find some other great pages on FB about hotels….Hotel Rwanda, Hotel for Dogs.. and I am reminded people are passive.  They want to watch a trailer, or be told about a brand or product… but consumers on FB don’t necessarily want to interact with the brand yet… nor are many looking to become a vocal endorser and push your hotel page to their friends and network.  Basically, it is just something to click… and a page is something to ignore until it annoys you and you de-fan.  What’s more, you can’t tell consumers about your product if you aren’t able to reach them within the closed network.  It reminds me of Mashable’s comments that “Facebook needs to convince users to SEEK advertising.

Very complex stuff.

Cure my cynicism.  Tell me why I am missing the point, the bus, and target?  How has a FB Page saved your hotel brand, and made things better for you?  I want to hear stories now because I am quickly feeling like a page is nothing more than the 80% not actually causing any real impact.  Time to cull, and focus on the effective 20%…..

Is FB part of that 20% that gives you 80% of results?  Let me know!  Otherwise… I might be encouraging clients to build the page, and simply move on.

Share your experiences and thoughts!

Josiah Mackenzie, hotel marketing pro, blew my mind once again with his exhaustive and insightful advice in using Flickr for Hotels.  His social media plan and help is just…. wow.  Thanks sir.  Some of his thoughts will be in the social media bible, whenever someone has enough time to sit down and write one (even though it seems to change second to second).  Whatever the case, his work always gets me thinking.  This time it brought me back to the vague, somewhat uneasy marriage of business and flickr.

Something people don’t seem to want to talk about, or at least isn’t brought up too often in regards to Flickr, is their famously nebulous Flickr TOS & Yahoo Terms of Service.  I have spoken to some industry professionals about it, and am confident these are quiet concerns people keep to themselves and the kitchen table at 3am.  A few have approached it, as well as there being spirited conversations, involving multiple staff, on Flickr itself.  Just like Yelp’s notoriously vague behind the scene manipulations, people have cried foul to the way Flickr chooses to manage/delete accounts, with seemingly random application of it’s TOS.  What’s more, it seems people aren’t confident in how to use it.  Even the staff have varying viewpoints and opinions on the matter.  At least one majour hotel flag and brand that uses Flickr relentlessly (and incredibly effectively) says he goes to bed at night thinking he will wake up and the accounts will be deleted. Other groups, like craft makers, are completely lost as to what “commercial purposes” means, and are getting frustrated with errant deletion of their groups.

The reason this concerns me is because I see the most avid users of flickr talk about it being “spam central”, and people being incredibly aware that brands are *really* starting to penetrate that site.  The above linked article is from a year ago, but the conversation is incredibly relevant.  If you are still unsure, try searching “flickr” and “TOS” on Twitter Search; that is pretty overwhelming that there is a big question looming.  As Flickr hears more from the community about brand spam, when will they take those famously vague words, “Flickr is for personal use only. If we find you selling products, services, or yourself through your photostream, we will terminate your account.” into account?  When might they start looking at a brand and suggesting it is creating less of a “story”,  and creating more of what their users don’t want.

People do not want their photo sharing site to turn into a business marketplace.  It is obvious by the discussions happening about “commerce and flickr”, and most apparent with commentary on flickr group discussions about Etsy, and people using Flickr to catalogue their offerings.  That is an incredible no no, apparently.  But that certainly draws our line a bit closer and more precarious, as we don’t *really* know what hotel’s photo sharing is about.  Can anyone define that?  We do know that “Flickereeno’s” (Flickr Staff) are incredibly helpful and accessible, compared with some other social sites.  They responded inside some of the above linked threads, as well as directly to people’s earnest questions.

These are some important problems to resolve in regards to exactly what space a hotel operates in, on flickr.  Their TOS expressively forbids businesses for using it, in any way, for commercial purposes. This includes etsy people using flickr to host a catalogue, or private, personal businesses owned by individuals who are using flickr in any way for their biz. This is complex, because they are obviously lenient, and cannot possibly have omnipresent control, but they have the right to clamp down any time they wish.

In a recent meeting, we met with Flickr’s GM on an unrelated note but asked him about brands and photos, *SPECIFICALLY* in regards to hotels.  His paraphrased words are as follows:

“We typically are fine with a collection of images that tells a story”, but they are down on direct advertising.

I doubt they will forbid relevant or useful brands from existing, but there is a chance in the future that they will crackdown.  Until the TOS are cleaned up to expressively permit a hotel from existing on Flickr, their right will be to delete your account without warning or justification. As of now, their TOS suggest that they *will* do this at some point in the future, in that a hotel is not a person using it for personal reasons.

I guess the point is that it is a relevant and important aspect of a hotel social media optimizer’s job.  Use it effectively and it can be an incredible tool to help your hotel.  If you aren’t sure how, you can find interesting articles like this about marketing and Flickr, or simply use Josiah’s incredible work.  You will miss out if you aren’t part of this, and it can really help your overall social media program.

At least for now.