Social Media - The Wild Wild West

You can’t go to a hospitality industry meeting or get into a conversation with someone else in the hotel business these days without the topic of “social media” coming up, and specifically, the seemingly unlimited power and influence of social media.

It was in just such a luncheon meeting earlier this week that I found myself referring to the current state of social media as the wild wild west, and the more I thought about it, the more it resonated with me.  Here’s my point:

In the old west, before the law came to town, you might have an incident where Billy Bob believed that Billy Joe had done something wrong, something that deserved punishment.  Armed with nothing else but his belief that Billy Joe had done something wrong, he would go and tell everyone in town that he knew, but of course when he told the story, he told it as a point of fact – he knew that Billy Joe had done this awful thing and now it was time for him to be punished, and before long there would be a mob intent on punishing Billy Joe for his crimes – let’s hang em!

Armed with a rope and on a mission, the towns’ folk would band together and hunt down Billy Joe intent on hanging him.  And as they dragged Billy Joe off to find a good hangin’ tree, he would be pleading for his life, professing his innocence, possibly even providing a good argument for why the accusations could indeed be false, but his pleas would fall on deaf ears.

Why couldn’t they hear whatever Billy Joe was saying?  Two over-riding reasons:

      1.       The mob mentality that he must be guilty, everything he is accused of must be true.  Why?  Because all these people said so, and they couldn’t all be wrong – ergo it must be true.

      2.       Then there’s the classic; of course he says he’s innocent, he doesn’t want us to hang him.  He’s screaming so loud about being innocent, he must be guilty.

Guilty until proven innocent, only there was a catch, you didn’t even have the opportunity to prove your innocence.  A no win situation.

Of course, after hanging enough innocent men and with the advent of bringing law and order into these frontier towns, people came to see that there may be a need for a process in order to more accurately punish the guilty, and not the innocent.

Fast forward to today, and the circumstances are eerily similar. 

Someone, right or wrong, makes an accusation that they believe to be true, and they write and post a review, because they want others to know what they experienced.  (Indirectly, although in some cases they would dispute my accusation, they want the topic of their review punished, they may not actively think about it, but they have to know what the potential outcome could be).

Now, their review gets posted to Trip Advisor, they tweet it out, they put it on Face Book, and in the blink of an eye it goes viral – everyone is reading it, and everyone believes it to be true.  (And maybe it is, but that isn’t the point – or at least, it isn’t my point).

The hotelier in question can write a rebuttal, but let’s face it, everyone expects him or her to do so, so again, depending on how detailed the accusation, and how compelling the rebuttal, the hotel probably has a 50/50 chance of convincing people that the original accusation is without foundation, but again, the damage is done – the story is out there, and because it’s on the web, it’s potentially out there forever.

I’m not a fan of “big brother”, nor am I one to want to attempt to restrict free speech, and I wouldn’t even begin to speculate on how to regulate these comments on the internet.

So why write this at all?

Because it reinforces my point that I previously made about the need for hotels to develop a social media strategy, now.  If you want to be ahead of the curve and not a casualty, you need to develop a strategy to deal with social media, now, and then dedicate the necessary resources to effectively implement your strategy.

This is no different than crisis management and the need to have an effective crisis management plan in place before the crisis hits, not after.  Many businesses suffered the consequences when they put off the development of their crisis plan and found themselves standing in front of the media with their pants around their ankles, because they foolishly believed it couldn’t happen to them, and guess what – it did.

The power of the web is infinite.  Doesn’t that sound like something worthy of your attention? 

Need an experienced hospitality professional to help your property reach its full potential?  Contact me.

New to this Blog?  Click here to subscribe by email and never miss another post.            

Social Media Strategy – Do You Have One?

Every day it seems that I learn something new as it relates to social media.

The impact of social media is everywhere.

The latest issue, is the impact, the use, and the potential use of, social media as it relates to revenue management.  

This latest issue reminds me of what I consider to be the evolution of revenue management.

We all know where revenue management came from – the airlines, and they have clearly mastered its use over the years.

But what I’m referring to is the evolution in Hotels, and specifically, when revenue management started to gain some recognition and respect as an important tool to maximize room revenues.

This also contributed to how a lot of revenue managers were “born”.

Once upon a time we all had reservation managers and as General Managers many of us spent a lot of time with our reservation managers reviewing group blocks, pick up, ROB growth, pace reports and competitive reports.  

We were revenue managing, we just didn’t define it as such.

As time progressed, and technology advanced, our reservations managers were drawn more and more into the technical side of things, the deeper analysis of trends and patterns, and the like.  Most, while still managing the reservations process, the office, the staffing and all the other components of effectively managing a reservations office.

Then one day it occurred to us – this is more than can be effectively managed by one person, and if we’re going to win the game amongst our competitors, we need someone solely concentrating on revenue management.

We summoned our reservations manager to our office, sat them down and gave them the good news . . . congratulations, you’re our new revenue manager.

Now, in my opinion, we are in the same place with social media.  We are asking someone, and in this case our revenue manager, to manage this off the side of their desk, while maintaining their attention on revenue management.

Something is going to suffer, it has to, because social media too is now too big to be lumped in to someone’s existing duties, especially your revenue manager.

Mastering social media, if that’s even possible, requires a special skill set and a dedicated focus.

If you want to win this round, and be ahead of the curve and not simply a follower, you need to develop a strategy to deal with social media, now, and then dedicate the necessary resources to effectively implement your strategy.

The problem, as I see it, is that no one has yet figured out how to truly measure the ROI from the impact of social media, and that is definitely going to keep Hotel companies from committing to add another body to the management structure.

No one is going to want to sit in front of an owner and try and pitch the idea of having someone solely dedicated to social media in their Hotel, without some solid data to support it, and therein lies the problem, at least for the moment.  

Regardless, everyone will come around to this, that much I can promise you.

The question is; where do you want to be when it does?

You know how we’re all waiting for the next big thing, whatever that is?

Well, this is it.  Now that you know, what are you going to do about it? 

Need an experienced hospitality professional to help your property reach its full potential?  Contact me.

New to this Blog?  Click here to subscribe by email and never miss another post.