Competition is heating among major hotels: Using social media customer perceptions to improve hospitality brands

Growing awareness of and generating added publicity for your hotel is one thing. Having ability to link the pains behind such an increase in occupancy and market visibility to efforts of the public relations campaign is another thing. The differentiation lies in tracking & identifying the outcome of a PR campaign on your company, with the major factor being measurement.

PR is a very significant tool for the hospitality industry. From establishing a brand or repositioning it to catching attention to a hotel inauguration or the adding of a new facility, PR can be considered as the most credible and valuable communication tools of modern era. A well-executed PR program can not only increase awareness, but it also can be a strongly influential force especially with the meteoric rise in online marketing and social media sites wherein people review hotels, post comments and share their experiences which are not only viewed by existing guests but also by potential guests. These actions contribute to and ensure the accomplishment of a hotel.

Let us understand why PR effectiveness is so talked about in the hotel industry. It’s the most cost-efficient way for promoting a hotel, establishing third-party integrity, and ensuring the hotel name is in front of the trade industry, publications, and people through a mix of electronic, print and online media. To check out this effectiveness of PRs across top hotels of the globe, we have tried to dig deeper into the social media space to get a reality check done.

The competition between hotel giants is heating up with close competition between Marriott, Hyatt and Four Seasons. As Hyatt tries to move ahead in its quest for dominance, the competition for the top slot is bound to intensify in times ahead.  In the current post, we have tried to track these major hotel chains on social media and analyze the buzz around them. For the deep dive analysis, we have focused on three key factors –

1. Share of Volume,
2. Sentiment Balance, and
3. Top Topics of Discussion about these brands in social media conversations.

Let’s see the performance of the hotels on each of these metrics:

1. Share of Volume:

Share of volume is the relative share of a brand in all the buzz happening on social media about the industry. Though, it does not directly specify popularity of a brand or lack of it, it is a great indicator of awareness about the brand on various social media channels.

Above chart shows share of volume for various hotel giants with respect to one another. It is clear from the chart that Marriott lead the pack and closely followed by Hyatt and Four Seasons on share of volume related to the buzz generated online.

2. Sentiment Balance:

Sentiment balance shows the proportionate balance of positive and negative sentiments expressed in conversations from social media. Fusion Analytics World automatically categorizes data under positive, negative and neutral sentiment using advanced text analysis and natural language processing.

The chart clearly indicates that Carlson Hotels has the overall best sentiment balance followed by Best Western and Accor Group. On the other hand, Choice Hotels has the worst sentiment balance followed by Sheraton since difference between their positive and negative sentiments is the least among the major hotels that Fusion Analytics World is tracking.

Marriott with high volume and high negative sentiment indicates most of the conversations are not what their PR and Marketing teams would like to see. Insights like these help brands take immediate actions before things go out of control, especially by knowing the topics of discussion elaborated in the next section.

3. Key Conversation Topics:

Now that we have understood where things stand in terms of volume and sentiment, we need to put that information into action. Improving a negative buzz or maintaining a positive buzz is only possible if one knows what are the hot topics people are buzzing about. The below analysis, helps to determine what topics a brand needs to concentrate on.

The key topics of conversation are:

• Restaurants
• Customer Experience
• Lobby
• Bathroom
• Lounge

The chart highlights relative importance of each topic for both brands from the point of view of their customers. Interesting to note that Starwood Hotels and Best Western leads on topic related to Bathrooms while Marriott and Intercontinental Hotels lead on conversation linked to Lobby. Four Seasons sees conversation surrounding Music, Restaurants and Customer Experience.