The thought of booking your next trip on Facebook sounds like such a relief. You no longer have to keep searching endlessly on google for the best price out there. This is what hotels are coming around to doing in order to beat sites like Expedia and Travelocity. In this article in the New York Times, this is exactly what is going on around Facebook. Hotels want to get control back on their hotel deals. They are looking at what people click on for their “likes” in order to make sure their hotel provides exactly what each person wants out of their trip. Therefore, if someone like a certain type of pillow or special service, they will be provided with this on their next trip to that hotel. I think that this is a great idea because people will get exactly what they ask for. There will be much less disappointment in their trip and they would get what they pay for. As they say you always want to get your moneys worth and what better way to do this then have a hotel make you feel special with your needs.
Once people press the like button on Facebook, the hotel wants to contact them as soon as possible. The hotels want to make sure that they are the ones who are searching for you as opposed to the other way around. This in my opinion is great service, in a way it what they call “silent service” which is something everyone likes. The customers do not have to tell the hotel what they want or looking for, the hotel searches and finds out what the people like and want. According to the New York Times article, PhoCusWright, a travel research firm, has found that 13 percent of social-network users now shop for travel on those Web sites and 35 percent of mobile-phone users expect to book travel on their phones in the next year.The Trump Hotel Collection has been offering Facebook reservations for 6 months. The Facebook reservations would allow guests to put their complaints out on the companies page or enter sweepstakes to win a free hotel stay!
Douglas Gorenstein
Ivanka Trump of the Trump Organization. “When I tweet out a hotel special, a million people see it.”
It’s interesting to see that the old formula of traffic applies anywhere. Prime commercial real estate is where the traffic is, and now that the “hanging out” is in Facebook, what a better place to set up shop… Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a great idea and I am certain that this is just the beginning of a “TSUNAMI” of “social network” retail stores and even more marketing tools to bring customers to the registers.
Social sites such as Facebook are “happy places” just like when you are on vacation somewhere. Looking around at people’s postings is entertaining, and if you are in the travel business is a gold mine, because you get to pin point exactly where people are vacationing and telling all their friends what a great time they had, showing off their tans, new friends etc.
All these postings trigger a chain reaction that is fueled from “Facebook envy,” where the lucky vacationers don’t leave out any of the repetitive pictures that they took while one vacation, they make sure that all are posted.
Oh here I am looking great in my bathing suit, its happy hour and I having a nice cocktail with a bunch of my new friends, they all love me!
Here we are on our way to a happening spot.
I just wish you were here, you are missing out big time-this place is great!
If that doesn’t make you run to the travel agency (I am old school) I don’t know what will…
Kidding aside, a whole new industry targeting Facebook “happy” customers is probably on the works as we speak.
Whenever I see people hanging out at the beach, it reminds me of when I used to live in South Beach and makes me want to get on a plane and just be a beach bum for a change, and I am certain that my friends would probably say: Hmmm, If “I HAD A JOB,” I could probably afford a weekend in sunny Florida…