Facebook and other social media can be greeted with mixed emotions, some are cynical and some use it very effectively. We interviewed Rob Palleschi, Global Head, Hilton Hotels & Resorts who takes Facebook very seriously – even more importantly, so do many people who regularly stay in hotels.
With over 1 million Facebook ‘fans’ regularly engaging with the Hilton brand – the first hotel brand to achieve this number – we think there are some lessons here for hoteliers and other hospitality professionals and
H & C News is very grateful to Rob Palleschi for answering the questions that follow, providing real and valuable insights into the strategy and processes that Hilton is applying.
Rob Palleschi has more than 25 years of hospitality experience and today leads one of the most recognised brands in the hospitality industry as global head, Hilton Hotels & Resorts. He oversees all aspects of Hilton Worldwide’s flagship brand and leads a portfolio of more than 550 hotels and resorts across six continents.
What is the strategy behind acquiring one million fans? Many organisations have tried achieving a high number of fans, but without demonstrating a clear vision of how they can then use fans to good effect.
The engagement campaign begins with our belief that social media is a critical communication channel for our business and provides unique ways to connect with guests to help drive business, shape product development, maintain our contemporary relevance, and understand the needs of today’s travellers.
Firstly, we engaged qualified fans through wide-reaching targeting of users who like travel and hospitality related interests. We also focused our efforts on target countries and regions that are top priorities for us. These include emerging markets where we are opening more hotels and growing our customer base, and top regions where Hilton enjoys strong brand recognition and presence.
This differs sharply from placing a flood of ads or promoted posts across Facebook with the aim to quickly build likes among any possible users.
Visibility on social media platforms is crucial
As a global brand, we recognise how crucial it is to be visible on a variety of social media platforms. This is to ensure we are involved in the ‘always on’ conversation and have the ability to connect with our current guests and potential guests, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
To deliver this 24-hour presence on Facebook, Hilton Worldwide has put into place dedicated teams to respond to guest assistance issues and enquiries in real time, just as our public relations team has expanded its scope to continually generating posts to create interest and fan interaction.
Social media advertising continues to evolve as a marketing channel, and today is part of our social marketing mix when appropriate. These ads can help us quickly connect with key audiences and reach users who may be interested in our brand or offering, but have not sought us out on Facebook.
How have you measured return on investment to date, from your initial investment of acquiring fans?
By creating defined goals and objectives from the beginning, we have been able to evaluate our success and are better able to shift courses when we are not achieving the results that matter for us.
Correlating revenue and positive social media conversations
We are continually evaluating the correlation between revenue and volume of positive social media conversations about the brand. Other metrics we value include an increase in direct engagement with our brand through social; sharing of Hilton related content by social users; and traffic to our website and hotel bookings driven by social referrals.
Listening to our guests is critically important and we are always watching both the quantity of guest assistance related social conversations and the content, so that we can best serve travellers around the world.
How were fans acquired? Was it through offers, incentives, or other techniques?
Rather than enticing users with a flood of giveaways or ads, our tactics have focussed on reaching users who find engagement with Hilton to be relevant and result in authentic conversations about our hotels and resorts worldwide. Implementing these tactics means that we need to consistently showcase and share locally relevant content at both property and brand level.
The launch of the global pages structure on our brand Facebook page was a big part of this initiative, and in January 2013 we launched our UK and Mexico country specific Facebook pages.
Each page has customized content relevant to these markets, providing our guests with offers, packages, promotions and news that resonate within local markets, while simultaneously showcasing content that is also globally relevant. In the past year, we have also begun integrating a paid social strategy, which is an important element of our approach to our social channels.
Our team invested time in understanding the Facebook population and pairing that data alongside our global customer base and regions where we rank first in awareness and traveler preference. We aligned our marketing activity to support the wider growth campaign.
Facebook activity related to specific projects such as our sponsorships of the GRAMMYs and Tribeca Film Festival and launch of the Hilton Urgent Vacation Care Centre went into market at specific points in the fan drive to help grow our base as organically as possible.
We also leveraged our internal communication channels to drive awareness of the Facebook fan drive and encouraged all team members to help the brand reach this milestone.
Will the acquisition process ensure subsequent ‘engagement’?
As part of launching country specific Facebook pages, the independent engagement strategies have been implemented for each channel. This is because guests respond to topics and style of posts differently in each country.
For example, in the UK our posts talk with guests using questions and calls to action, with two thirds of the posts being conversational in nature and only a third directly promoting Hilton packages and offers.
By targeting our Facebook strategies by country to reflect the way in which guests use and respond to posts, we are encouraging increased engagement. We also sense that reaching the one million like mark moves us well past a tipping point for engagement because the high number of people seeing our messages automatically sparks organic sharing.
Which demographics do you target to ensure ‘qualified’ fans?
Hilton attracts a wide range of demographics that align with our advertising and marketing campaigns. These include specific markets, age ranges and interests. Further, social channels provide a cost effective way to quickly share information with customers in a particular market where we may not be running aggressive advertising, PR or marketing. The ability to specifically target users to receive a message on Facebook has been helpful for our niche marketing campaigns.
What interactions and with how many fans have been achieved and measured to date?
Posts that highlight photos, ask questions or provide a call to action tend to generate the most traction for our brand. Visuals posted on brand social media channels spark conversations as they provide users with an opportunity to comment and share personalised feedback about a destination, property or experience.
One recent successful social media campaign surrounded the launch of our Hilton Urgent Vacation Care Centre (Vacation Care Centre). The website, unveiled on 14th January 2013, features personal diagnoses of vacation needs and customised prescriptions urging people to take breaks, weekend getaways and longer vacations.
One of the Facebook posts for this campaign generated more than 8,600 ‘likes’, which helped to drive people to the interactive website and learn about the brand’s leisure offerings.
Another post that received positive engagement showcased an exotic image taken from a unique angle at Hilton Pattaya in Thailand. The post generated more than 15,000 ‘likes’ and more than 560 comments.
As a global leader in hospitality, it is our job to develop and share content that resonates with business and leisure travellers alike. We look to a number of sources to inspire social media content, including Hilton brand news, offers, travel tips and destination guides. We generate content that we believe will resonate on our social media channels and draft messages that encourage engagement.
Since achieving one million ‘likes’ we have now reached 1,010,687.
What are the plans going forward to maintain and increase fan numbers and engagement?
In 2012, our Facebook community increased by 205 percent and engagement rose by 774 percent. To maintain this level of growth and engagement it is important that our social media strategy continues to evolve to keep communities interested and prevent stagnation.
Customer service sits at the heart of our brand and is central to our Hilton Brand Promise that every guest feels cared for, valued and respected, and our social channels often act as an online extension of this promise.
We continue to work to understand how service and guest expectations are evolving online and incorporate this knowledge into the management of our social communities. Consumers have access to the Internet 24 hours a day and expect brands to be readily available to respond to comments or conversations in real time, and this has driven our approach to community management and guest assistance online.
Our content also has to reflect the needs of our guests and must remain timely and relevant and add value to our guests’ online experience.
What are the plans going forward to translate ‘engagement’ into measurable revenues?
We will continue to measure our Facebook engagement not only through comments, likes, and shares of our content on the platform but also through analysing correlations between increases in revenue sales and the volume of positive conversation on our channels. We will also look at data such as referral traffic to our hotel booking sites from our brand Facebook page.
H&C News would like to thank Rob Palleschi for his time and clarity.
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