ah…social media reputation

Social media marketing is always mainstream. Moreover, the management of social media is mainstream in tourism. eWord of Mouth (or as someone says Words of Mouse) is extremely actual.  I was this morning reading hotelmarketingstrategies.com and I’ve found two interesting posts of Josiah Mackenzie.

1. how to reply to an hotel review where Josiah basically says that the review-reply is correct because (i) it offers explanations why this may not be the typical experience…but it’s not an excuse, (ii) the author refers back to his company mission of “Creating Personal Human Connection”, which reinforces his commitment to delivering great experiences and (iii) he provides his personal email address for followup communication if needed.

As for this topic I would like to suggest the strategy of one hoteliers here in Lugano: Mr. Carlo Fontana (Hotel Lugano Dante – congrats for the new website) on Tripadvisor who encourages his customers to write reviews and he often replies. If you ask carlo why, I guess that his answers will be on two different topics: (i) emotional/ empathic connection with the customers and (ii) money…I guess he certainly knows what does it mean to be first on tripadvisor on a given city/region/state. But I personally do not know studies in that field.

2. how to choose a web reputation analyzer.  Here Josiah  basically poses 15 basic questions useful to find the correct social media analyzer. What I think is that this is mainstream nowadays. We’ve also worked on this topic @webatelier.net and it is quite interesting.

Among the multitude of the software available online it is important to choose the correct one BUT for tourism and hospitality I PERSONALLY think that the game is a bit more difficult because of:
1. The intangible characteristic of the product tourism;
2. The generally speaking low technology literacy of hospitality and tourism mangers;
3. The different products available on the hospitality and tourism market;
4. The very specialized communities for tourism;
5. The lack of web companies and consultancy companies that REALLY understand tourism.

Kisses&hugs