Hotel Loyalty programs. Could they move to Social Media?

In the next 5- 8 years the majority of hotel consumers will be 24hrs a day connected to the internet via a mobile device. An iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry or whatever other gadget that will appear in the market will be in the pocket of all the customers of a hotel. Those gadgets already have a connection to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and many other Social Media.

Hotels have spend fortunes to create complex Loyalty Programmes and maintain them cost them even more. It is very hard to keep track of all those cards you given out and even harder to determine who likes what. Social Media could be the substitute if used well. The painful part will be the transition. Hotels need to create in-house procedures of how those tools will be used in order to keep an open line of communication without crossing the line of privacy and not being annoying.

Some tests have shown that customers trust real People more than impersonal Social Media Profiles. It is more easy to become a Facebook friend of the director of a hotel than of the HotelGrand. The Hotel Napa Mermaid in Agia Napa Cyprus has started slowly but surely to connect its customers on the social Media Sphere.  The result is fantastic, customers already book not only their rooms for the next season but also participate in conversations with the director who receives direct  suggestions on how he could improve the services of this newly renovated upscale resort hotel.

Hyatt started last year a Twitter Concierge Service and opened the way to new ways of customer care. Now the next step is to create engagement elements on the social media sphere to maintain frequent non disturbing conversations and pass the “plastic loyalty” to a more live loyalty where personalisation can reach perfection.

We are entering the era of transforming hotel loyalty programmes and creating the conditions for Online Marketing for hotels to finally  get personal. In order to achieve this we need to be careful and professional. Practical training is needed in order to create new internal standards and procedures, show people how to use the online tools adequately.