Social Media: The Secret Sauce For Winning The New Guest

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a transformation in the digital landscape across the world.

Research by IDC reports the new global spending on digital transformations to reach more than $2 trillion by 2022 compared to $1 trillion in 2018. The transformation has resulted in the emergence of a new guest. The new guest is a digitally conscious customer that relies on digital experiences to continue availing a brand’s service. Placed at the center of the new market reality, the digital experiences of the new guest now drive the return on investment and define success for companies.

The new guest is aware and is looking to make the right choice, irrespective of the cost incurred. This is why after analyzing over 400,000 messages handled by BCV, the preferred social media partner of luxury hotels across the world, we see that each hotel today is receiving more queries and messages with August seeing up to 237 messages in a month per property which is a 40% increase year-on-year (Y-O-Y).

The immediate next question for all hoteliers is what these messages are about and what should hotels be prepared to answer. The first good news is this, that in total, the total numbers of messages asking for cancellations have reduced considerably and are limited to around 5-6% of all messages as of last month.

What is also heartening to note, is the total share of messages enquiring COVID restrictions has dropped by almost 40% since March, showing more awareness of the traveler, and at the same time, displaying their willingness to travel again which should provide optimism to the industry.