Hotel Booking

Hotels and social media presence: by the numbers.

Like in most industries, the vast majority of Hotel brands have recognized the power and necessity of a strong social media presence. 

With 60 percent of travelers ages 34 and younger and 40 percent ages 35-54 regularly using Facebook, Twitter or any of several other platforms to aid in hotel selection, not even the most exclusive properties can afford to be off the social media grid. 

Not surprisingly, all 57 brands in our Digital IQ Index: Hotels study currently maintain an active Facebook page. All but four, or 93 percent, maintain both global and various property-level pages–an increase of 20 percent since 2011. In the Twitterverse, Hotel brand participation is almost as universal. With little growth between 2011 and 2012 — an uptick of just 2 percent, from 88 percent to 90 percent of Hotel brands Tweeting– this year, we recorded a near Facebook-level presence of 98 percent.

On emerging platforms, Pinterest and Instagram have also become very popular, with astonishingly fast adoption rates of 96 percent and 82 percent, respectively. 

Compared with last year, when just 17 percent and 19 percent of Hotel brands had both global and local accounts on these two, this year, those numbers virtually doubled to 46 and 33 percent. Even Google+, the least popular platform among hotel brands, has captured two-thirds of the industry. 

A sign of its waning influence, however, is that between last year’s study and this one, Hotels that had both global/property Google+ accounts nosedived from 63 percent to just 21 percent.

www.l2thinktank.com