Instagram and hotels

There are many, many ways that hotels – and other businesses, of course – to use Instagram in promotions. I saw one today that will interest you if you manage a hotel. A travel blogger posted two photographs to her Instagram account. One was the cover of a book, the other was a scenic view.

She wrote:

When I checked in to the Sheraton, there was a lovely Instagram book waiting for me with a note that says “as we know that you love to take Instgram pictures, we thought you’d enjoy this hand-picked selection of twenty five of our favorite shots.”

Lovely. And the fact that she posted about it had obviously impressed her. The book, presumably, contained twenty five Instagram images of local scenes. Hopefully there was also copy explaining what the scene portrayed and where it was. I hope too that here was credit for the photographers.

Ideally, the hotel had made this a community project and invited local Instagrammers to submit their work. This in itself is worthy of press releases.

How did they know that she was an Instgrammer? I don’t know but it made me realize that if I was running a hotel, it wouldn’t be difficult to do a social media search for everyone who booked into my hotel. Then, I could personalize their guest experience. All it needs is a series of notecards (of your Signature Collection, of course). Then, every guest has a handwritten card in their room.

This is particularly easy if they follow your page on Facebook,  follow you on Twitter or on Pinterest. (Or if they have repinned one of your images). If they do, they are giving you permission to see their own information.

As you know, I’ve never understood what full-time social media managers do all day. We’ll here’s a job fore them.