Introduction
Social Media today can be associated to a Pandora’s box. It is pertinent for organizations to join these platforms but it can often lead to a social media failure for the company. Social media has really developed over the last 10 years with companies spending at least 13% of their fiscal budget on these activities. According to a recent study conducted by McKinsey, 50% of customers now base their purchasing decision on what social media reviews dictate and recommend Majority of consumers are affected by reviews and blogs and often form their opinions based on other people’s opinions (Hudson, 2016). In the assignment below, two hotels from the American market have been chosen – Hyatt and Marriott. The main aim of the assignment is to gain insight into how important social media is for them and what strategies and approaches do these companies follow.
Hyatt
Hyatt Hotels, founded by Jay Pritzker in 1957, is amongst the largest hotel organization with over 600 properties across 52 countries. They stress that being ‘social’ in the words social media is where the ‘true and valuable’ connections exist for them. They are interested in the use of social media to improve a customers’ experience inside and outside their premises. With each platform, they set out to reach a different kinds of hotel patrons (Hutchinson, 2015).
Marriott
Marriott International, founded in 1927 by John Willard Marriott, has more than 6000 properties over 121 countries around the world (Marriott, 2017). They operate over 30 brands internationally ranging from luxury to premium hotels to suit every travel preference. The company has reported revenues of more than $17 billion in the fiscal year 2016.Rated as one of the most ethical and employee friendly company by Forbes with Marriot is very popular amongst travellers.
SOCIAL FRAMEWORK
The Social framework has been applied below to understand the main drivers behind Hyatt and Marriott’s motivation to establish themselves on the internet.
Social Framework for Hyatt
1.Social interactions
Hyatt’s social interactions with their audience are spread across popular platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat and their own website. They were the first well-known hospitality brand to use Facebook for wanting to interact with customers 24/7. All the platforms are managed by Conversocial, a third party company. Their control room integrates all the platforms together which makes accessing a user more efficient (Frumkin, 2016). For example, the turn-time on Facebook’s messenger is only 15 minutes. Platforms like Twitter and Facebook would be more suitable to monitor growth and engagement whereas Instagram and Snapchat would help in understanding the kind of audience and their preferences.
2.Connection
The company tries to target figures which are a mixture of ‘hub + pump’. ‘World of Hyatt’s’ is a loyalty program geared towards connection their clients to people, experiences and places that they are unknown to them. This was launched during the Oscars in 2017 and aimed towards reducing violence and hate in the world by reaching out to new people and appreciating their journey (Pasquarelli, 2017). Their rewards campaign was disseminated globally and has been nominated for multiple awards.
3.Incentives and Activation
Since their services are prone to low barriers of activation, their promotion are conducted with influencers and public figures. Hyatt launched their Shorty awards nominated entry,’ It’s Good to Not Be at Home”. Marketed as a change from being at home, they promoted this campaign with the help a contest conducted with a live audience.
Famous comedian of Comedy central, Iliza Schlesinger, documented her life on the road #AtHyattRegency and #PassportToComedy, to increase engagement with contest winners and the followers. With a colleague engagement of over 60%, there was also a 17%-year increase for their rewards program.
4.Longevity:
To increase engagement, they associate with influencers like lliza and ceremonies like the Oscars. Hyatt is determined to be create value in the long run. With a yearly investment of $820 million on measured media according to Kantar, Hyatt will be able to create a resonant life-long brand (Kessler, 2010).
Social Framework for Marriott
1.Social interactions
Media sites like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and their own website are used. M-Live, an in-house control room, is where employees monitor and communicate with customers. Geo-fencing is also used to monitor the locations for every Marriott post (Nayer, 2011). M Live enables Marriott to increase customer engagement on the basis on predictive trending topics and identifying opportunities to create special moments.
2.Incentives, Activation and Connections
Marriott has been able to tap into different markets by integrating their rewards programs with other organization. For example, NBA star Muggsy Bogues helped them entrench the South African market with informational campaigns in the country.
Universal Music group helped them gain access to awards shows like the Grammy’s, MTV VMA’s etc. while Marriott gave them access to their properties for concerts. These events are often attended by lucky reward members. Viral activities are piggy-backed on to generate interest. The person who caught all the Pokémon’s from the viral game, was awarded with free stays at Marriott location around the world (IEGSR, 2017).
3.Longevity
Marriot is intent on creating lifelong relationships with customers by creating loyal brand followers. This is predominantly done by helping customers make memories for life. They try to adopt new programs and create loyalty amongst customers. By positioning their hotels as a meeting point, they have been able to drive revenue.
Social Media Auditing and Analysis
The POEM framework was used in conjunction with Social Media Auditing to enhance the perspective. As mentioned in (Figure1) and (Figure 2), below is the Auditing and POEM analysis.
Since 68% of all internet users use Facebook, it comes as no surprise that Hyatt and Marriott are so heavily invested into it (Greenwood, Perrin and Duggan, 2017).
Hyatt was the first well-known hospitality brand to use Facebook. They use it to interact with customers 24/7. Majority of the customers that visit them are actually male (Adweek, 2017), their aim is to branch out and spread their message to women, since they make 80% of all travel decisions. Managed by their control room, every user gets a response within 20 minutes. Questions like extra room-services, hotel location etc. are answered (Frumkin, 2017).
Marriot’s target customers are young adults and adults. To help provide customer with an intimate experience, they utilise the messenger in a resourceful way by helping customers book a room, but also provide them with travelling advice and vacation tips (Dua, 2017).
Marriot also live streams their charity organizations to create an online community that can engage with them and contribute towards better future. Marriott, launched their Awards for Excellence on their Facebook page. They display messages and pictures of their employees, making customers connect with them emotionally and form a connection.
With Marriott having 4 times (Figure 3 and 6) the number of followers on Facebook, Hyatt still has a higher growth rate of 0.2% (Hyatt Facebook, 2017) as compared to that of Marriott which is 0.1% (Marriott Facebook, 2017) However, considering that Marriott has over 8 million visits, they do have a higher growth average, which displays their objective of creating lifelong loyalty of member unlike Hyatt’s which is to resolve negative reviews. (Keyhole, 2017)
Hyatt has multiple accounts to identify with different needs like Hyatt Concierge, Hyatt Tweets and Hyatt International. They aim to not push information rather answer customer’s queries. Their global presence has helped in increasing their conversation metrics by 2000% with 50k new followers on twitter (Dua, 2017). Customers’ increased use of #WorldOfHyatt and #InAHyattWorld displays their appreciation for the current rewards programs and ad campaigns. With a sentiment score of 91, Hyatt customers seem more satisfied by their level of complaint handling.
Marriott uses twitter to target customers that want to engage with the company about problems or complaints. Over 50% of their tweets include hashtags, the most popular ones are #TogetherTomorrow and #Marriott. They are clearly resonating their objective successfully. The chain conducted a #MRPoints campaign where rewards points were used as social media currency. Guests that chose to connect their social media with the company’s had the opportunity to engage with the company through customised content and rewards on Twitter. This resulted in creating over 66.6 million impressions and the company generated over 26 million reward points. They were even nominated for a Shorty Award in 2016 for this campaign (Shorty Awards, 2017).
Marriot’s reach on Twitter is 6 million (Figure 16), more than triple that of Hyatt’s (Figure 9). This means more people have been exposed to their content and are engaging more as displayed by their higher level of re-tweets. Their similar ratios of tweet responses and Re-tweets displays that both the companies are pro-active in attending their customers’ needs and push data out to small extent. With a sentiment score of 91 (Figure 11), Hyatt has left behind Marriot with a score of 73 for customer complaint resolution and satisfactory responses (Figure 17). Hyatt customers seem more satisfied by their level of complaint handling but Marriott handles more complaints and has higher a higher response rate (Keyhole, 2017).
Hyatt gives customers a peak into the local culture and the locations of their chain of properties through Instagram. Targeting millennials, they continuously follow back their followers to increase a sense of engagement. They have a better response rate when compared to Marriot’s and high level of comments that help them retain their customers. Their “Good Not to Be Home” was featured heavily on Instagram and Twitter and helped them gain 4,500 followers in the span of 3 months. The customers revealed their travelling truths on all platforms which lead to an 105% increase in the brands social engagement.
Marriott targets customers that are interested in sharing their journey through them. The company uses Geo-Fencing to understand which location attracts more media and this information is communicated to managers every day. Personal touches like room-upgrades or free appetizer are offered to increase delight (Golden and Caruso-Cabrera, 2017). Low level of interaction incapacitates the company from obtaining any service insight.
Marriott has 200,000 followers (Figure 24) while Hyatt has only 80,000 (Figure 20). Hyatt also has a lower level of engagement with their customers as compared to Marriott (Figure 23 & 27). While their customers tweet more about events like ‘spring break’ or ‘groundhog’s day’ while Marriott customers are more interested in locations like ‘Beverley hills’ and ‘Hawaii’ (Figure 22 & 26). Both the companies use Instagram for visually disseminating property locations around the world.
Failures
Talking about Failures, Marriott has a bad start with the use of Facebook. The company wanted to integrate Ad’s within the messenger application rather than polluting customers newsfeed with them. Customer who has recently stayed at Marriott properties were targeted first, but it was a disaster. Customers felt their private space has been intruded and the company had to limit the use. However, since that day, Marriott has a much better reputation on Facebook (Dua,2017)
Hyatt has also seen their fair share of ups and downs in the media world. The company actually has to pull the plug on a campaign before it even started. Their campaign was about “female empowerment”, but after the launch of Sheryl Sandberg’s book launch, they quickly changed their theme to “Travel Hacks” (Kaye, 2017). This was done to prevent bad press as her book had not been received well and they were afraid of a backlash.
Bad reviews can leave a bad aftertaste for the companies but it is dependent on how the company handles it. Marriott, with their short-turnaround time have been successful in converting unhappy patrons into satisfied and have increased their increased their media presence.
Analysis of Strategies
The analysis above with social media auditing and the comparison of strategies used by the companies, lessons and recommendation can be drawn.
Social media can be a like double edged sword, displaying opportunity and risk.
It can be acknowledged that while using multiple platforms for different messages, errors can take place. To overcome such mistakes, social media management should be allocated to a separate team that can be held accountable for the same. Similar to Marriott, using an outsourcing company like M-Live can aid in proper assessment and reduce workload for the organization.
Customers can be influenced through multiple platforms but the message disseminated should be different for every platform. Hyatt promotes their property locations and culture on Instagram as compared to Twitter, where they only address customer’s queries. Another important point is that the target audience for each platform differs, suppose Instagram attracts consumers below 30, which is why Hilton communicates their message of ‘free and easy living’ and ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ experiences through 15 seconds videos and pictures (Champagne, 2017).
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