can a hotel properly market themselves on facebook - if so, how to do it?

[sandra]

this subject has been brought up by our board of directors to gain marketing perspective. we deal with a chain of five hotels in various areas in the UK and have special deals up for auction on ebay which has been successful. as any business, we would like to build our clientele. has anyone been financially successful with facebook for this purpose? i have looked at facebook from a more personal perspective and find a lot of negativity, silly commentary and cannot see how this would be a productive way to market our hotels. can anyone out there can give some ideas of how to do this?

[Lori]

Marketing using Facebook requires the initial use of a "fan base". If you can get the word out to all of your clientele that are happy with your hotels and have them "like" your Facebook page. It then shows up on their page that they "like" your hotels, therefore creating a new type of word of mouth advertising. Granted you are going to have people who will have negative comments but as long as the majority of the feedback is positive then it can prove to be very rewarding in finding new clientele.
Try using give-a-ways or % off contests for certain things like most romantic story at your hotels, or funniest story about your hotels, best experience at the hotel. Things of that nature. You could even try other contests or promotional tools. Good Luck.

[Chas]

What's the target age of your client and their demographics? Young people and holiday seekers would be most likely to use facebook.

[Josefina Cruz]

Yes of course. It is very possible and very effective to market any business using a Facebook. But Facebook alone won't be a good marketing strategy. It should just support your business but not the main marketing tool.

[Hina]

Yes it is possible and as stated, you would need to create a fan page which people can join.

How the fan page works:

You have a "wall" on your page that will allow you to publish whatever you want your public to see (eg: a promotion, an update concerning the hotel, etc). Everytime you'll write something on it, it will show in all of your "members" homepage, then they can "like" it or "share" it, which will show in all their friends' homepage too.

On your fan page, you'll also write a description of your business, with contacts where people can reach you. You can add with a little bit of HTML knowledge a nice presentation page and select it as the first page people will see when they find you or become a member.

How to get people to your page:

You can start adding "facebook Like buttons" on your main hotel website, there's no doubt your regular customers will "Like" as it is always a good way to stay tuned with your favourite busines' updates.

You can use Facebook Pay per click and direct the add to your fanpage. It's much cheaper when your add links to a fan page than to an external website.

You could give coupon codes or voucher codes only available to your facebook fan page members.



Another solution if you don't want to create a fan page would be to use facebook Pay per click and direct it to your mainn website. It's may be easier and faster but in the long run, the fan page stays the best strategy.

I hope this helps,

Here's an article I made about how powerful and cheap facebook pay per click is.
http://workwithhina.com/why-you-should-u...-per-click

Hina Deane