The results are in! H&C News recently conducted its first survey to look at what social media activities are being undertaken by hospitality businesses – from hotels to fine dining, from pubs to events, from catering to cafes.
Using Social Media channels is today regarded as essential by most successful hospitality businesses, but how are they managing their activities, what are they spending, and how good are they at measuring the results? All questions that your business is no doubt considering. The survey shows you how others are performing, and – perhaps – what you should consider doing.
Here we report on the top line results – readers can then access all the results, which quickly and concisely reveal how their colleagues and competitors are performing.
H&C News Social Media Round Table
Next week: we report on the H&C News Social Media Round Table held to discuss the results of the Survey with representatives from across the sector – from head chef to food writer, marketing director to social media executive.
As you’d expect, it was a lively conversation – full of the experience of the current practices of many market-leading organisations.
Make sure you take a look at our report, and the insights that could benefit your own hospitality business.
The H&C News Social Media Benchmarking Report, February 2015
Background
- H&C News would like to thank our sponsor partners for their help in supporting both the Survey and the Round Table – citizenM Hotels, Armourcoat, newmedia2.0, and C&C Catering Equipment
- The survey asked just 18 questions, enabling respondents to quickly and concisely contribute their experience, adding comments if they wished. It required knowledge of the social media activity of their business – typically that of a marketing or social media employee – in order to answer the questions.
- Responses were drawn from across all areas of the UK hospitality sector, ensuring that both large and small organisations were represented, as well as both high end and economy operations.
- Most respondents had been using social media for more than three years: a small number for less than one year.
Whilst social media is usually controlled by a director or manager – perhaps indicating the importance with which it is regarded – it is actually operated by managers and executives. This suggests that a younger demographic may be responsible day-to-day (a question for the next survey).
Social Media channels
- Twitter and Facebook are the most used channels, followed by LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+. Instagram is clearly gaining ground: future surveys will monitor changing channel usage and share.
Twitter (74%) and Facebook (70%) are regarded as most effective: all others follow far behind at this time.
Effectiveness
Measuring effectiveness: ‘engagement with target audience’ is the top scoring measurement, a qualitative measurement that scores more highly than simple numbers of likes and followers. ‘Sales value’ and ‘bookings at your venue’ came next, indicating a desire to measure concrete results: it will be interesting to see how these progress in future surveys.
Return on Investment (RoI)
Just over half of respondents can’t or don’t track RoI, whilst just under half can track RoI – with most stating 50-100% evaluation. Clearly, many organisations need to invest in this area if they are to continue to support Social Media, or further invest in it.
Marketing strategy and spend
- Speed of response: lessons have clearly been learned about the dangers of slow or inappropriate responses: almost all respond same day, of which a majority respond in the same morning/afternoon. A small number take longer than a day.
- 63% are spending 0-10% of their marketing budget on social media, inviting the question for future surveys ‘how are you spending the other 90%?’ Only 9% are spending over 50% on social media, yet (see below) 64% regard their social media channels as very important.
- 95% of respondents state that social media is part of their strategic marketing plan for 2015.
- 73% state that they are increasing their social media activity and spend in 2015; none are decreasing spend.
- 64% feel that their social media channels are very important to their existing and target customers; 32% state quite important; only 4% regards it as not very important.
And finally…would like to do more and better
- Respondents expressed strong interest in the H&C News Round Table event – 69% would like to be invited.
- And the invitation to offer additional information or comments drew many expressions of interest in the results of the survey, and wishes to be kept informed of developments in social media and its use across the hospitality sector.
- A number echoed this respondent:
“Started to see some results, early days, and feel like dinosaurs, would like to do more and better, so keep us posted.”
H&C News has heard the message: we will seek in the coming weeks to help readers from all types of organisations ‘to do more and better’.
For your copy of the Social Media Benchmarking Report please email social@