Last week I was one of the thousands of travelers who had to deal with flight cancellations and delays because of the winter storm. I was scheduled to fly from JFK to SFO on Wednesday morning but I received a flight alert on Tuesday morning that my flight was canceled. I tried calling the airline but was unable to get through to a person due to high call volume. I tried to change my flight [...]

We always joke that hotel executives should think about social media before naming their hotels. Why? If you want to make sure you are able to monitor what people are saying about the property and engage in conversations across the Web, you need a name that is unique enough to come up in searches. Just ask the London Hotel or The Hotel how hard it is to track their mentions and you'll know the struggle [...]

This post was written and submitted by The Grand America Hotels & Resorts, a Revinate client. Embracing social media and developing relevant content and strategy is what every hotel should strive toward, but don’t take our word for it. According to Travel Weekly’s April 2010 article on Social Media, “Social media use among travelers continues to grow faster than the travel industry itself. Unique monthly visitors to social travel sites rose 34% between the first [...]

I am constantly surprised when I look at TripAdvisor reviews and see the amount of time that people take to write reviews. Why? As an active Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare user, I have been trained to share my thoughts in short bursts. I update my Facebook status in 2 sentences or less. I tweet in 140 characters and I provide Foursquare tips in 10 words or less. I have a theory that hotel reviews in [...]

At the end of September, Sir Richard Branson announced that he is getting into the hotel business. He plans to create a Virgin Hotel Empire. I have high hopes that he will approach the hotel business with an eye to doing things that guests will love, versus doing things the way they have always been done. The aim of the hotel project is to "redefine the customer journey from pre-arrival to check-out." When I look [...]

I see great examples of social media engagement every day.  While many of our clients are considered leaders in hospitality social media and have teams in place to manage engagement, many others are just starting to put social media practices in place and might have one person working part time on reviews and other social media platforms.  While I do think dedicating resources to social media is money well spent, I realize that for many [...]