Social media is not free and requires investments of time, staffing, and marketing costs to see a return. For hotels, in addition to direct bookings, effective social media metrics to track include the number of active followers and engagement, website visitors and page views, mentions and sentiment of reviews, and growth in transactions and repeat customers. With limited resources, hotels should carefully plan their social media strategy, start with free platforms to build their community, offer incentives like coupons, and monitor activities to improve return on investment over time. Social media also plays an important role in customer service by engaging customers, building trust and loyalty through listening and responding to customer needs and feedback.

1. Social Media ROI Social Media isdead. Long live Social Media ROI. Agnès Lerévérend & Lauriane Laurent

2. Exercice 1. What is meant by 'Social Media is not free'? 2. In addition to rooms bookings, what measurements would be effective for hotels? 3. How should a hotel, with limited resources, decide what SM efforts to make? 4. What role does SM play in offering customer services?

3. 1. What is meant by 'Social Media is not free'? « Everythingyou put into a social media program has a costattached to it. » Time (build a SM plan) Staff (time + knowledge) Marketing costs (design elements, content, influencers’ incentives , offers, fees to update your SM accounts, ads placement) => ROI is a business metric: the return must beequal or superior to the investment… and in the same unit (if youinvest money, you have to gain money or you are in trouble!

4. 2. In addition to rooms bookings, what measurements would be effective for hotels? (Active) followers: engaged, share photos/ comments/ feedbacks/ videos and link to theirfriends Visitors: survey, marketreasearch (segmentation) Page views Reputation: volume of mentions (positive and negative mentions), INK Transactional data (sales growth and transactingcustomers)

5. 3. How should a hotel, with limited resources, decide what SM efforts to make? Plan carefullyyour Social Marketing Plan = target audience + type of communication (ex: local events) + tools (both online and people) Choose the least costly media first= use first the free SM and buildyourcommunitybeforelaunchingcostly marketing campaigns Improve and completeyour pages on SM adding coupons, offers, loyalty programs Use ourinfluencers to expandour efforts Monitor carefully the activities on your SM to know whenyou are ready for the nextstep or whatyoushouldameliorate to improveyourROI

6. 4. What role does SM play in offering customer services? Engage Trust Loyalty Listen and answertheirneeds by betterunderstandingtheirneeds and preferences Improveyour services (a greattool to accompanyyourcustomersfrom the advicesbeforepurchasing to the after-sale service, offeringadditionaltips to improve the productspeformance or the service (Digital) differenciationwith the competitors