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Facebook Takes Over: What Does It Mean to the Hospitality Industry?

Facebook just reached another milestone --- 51% of Americans aged 12 or older are Facebook users. It took 25 years for telephones, eight years for TVs, and nine years for VCRs to reach that 50% threshold.

If people can organize family reunions on Facebook (as shown in the ABC News video), leisure, hospitality, and tourism companies can absolutely use Facebook to attract more business. According to a discussion on HotelNewsNow.com, many hotels have already drawn more traffic from Facebook than TripAdvisor or other travel review websites. Some hotels (e.g. Design Hotel) and airlines (e.g. Delta) have already allowed Facebook users to make reservations on the company’s Facebook page. In 2010, “nearly 13% of social-network users use social networks to shop for travel,” and “35% of U.S. online travelers interacted with a travel company on an online social network.” Wouldn't you agree with me that social media is a must-have tool for business?



References:
Black, C. (2011, March 23). http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/articles.aspx/5225/Facebook-leads-to-hotel-room-revenue.

Comments

  1. I agree that social media is now a must for all companies and those without it really do lose out on a lot of opportunities that these networks bring. As shown in the video, facebook is not only for teenagers or college students, everyone has one these days. A company who is well involved and keeps up with updating their facebook and twitter is a major plus, being that anyone can access both these social networks. People like having these networks update with them with the latest news and new offers which helps the company to advertise their new products easily from a computer. Social media is only getting more popular and it is important for companies to keep up with it in order to keep customers happy. Facebook is going to continue to grow and as it has already shown, it is becoming a place for companies to advertise, update and a source to grow their customer base.

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  2. The website Facebook can benefit hotels in many ways. A person is able to ‘Like’ hotels and discuss about positive experiences they have had. In addition, a hotel can promote their property through a fan page and keep their customers informed of new promotions and events.

    However, Facebook can also negatively impact a hotel. One offensive status update can deter potential customers away from the hotel and cause them to lose business. In addition, many people are tempted to talk about bad hotel and vacation experiences on Facebook. The issue with Facebook is that information has the potential to reach thousands of people instantly. Thus, Facebook can positively and negatively affect a hotel. Although Facebook is a must for all hospitality operations, it is important for a company to use precautions on the site.

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  3. Facebook is definitely a must-have business tool. Today Facebook has become the most popular online society for news and communication all around the world. There are over 500 million users on facebook, and that rate is rapidly growing. Facebook has over 900 million objects that people interact with such as pages, groups, events and community pages. This opens up a whole new marketing opportunity that is a lot more effective and personal than television ads or billboards. The average user is connected with over 80 community pages, groups and events. This means users want to acknowledge that they like a product or service and would like to have access to the information on the product's or service's page.

    Facebook is not just available on the computer anymore; it is now available on phones, cameras, ipads, and even televisions. There are over 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. It is clear that Facebook is no longer a trend, but a tool that people use everyday to communicate, share news, and even to do work. It just doesn’t make sense for a company to avoid using Facebook, they would be missing out on reaching hundreds of millions of people from all over the world.

    - Eric Hernandez

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  4. I think that social media could prove to be a very useful tool for Hospitality organizations, and other businesses. But, I also wonder if social media will become too much of a replacement for relations between companies or between employers and potential or current employees. By too much, I mean that, false impressions of people can be created with the use of social media. A employer looking for future employees may find aspects of a facebook page that he or she likes, but may have been falsified by the potential employee. There are risks and benefits when using social media for business relations.

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  5. Social media is most definitely a must-have tool for businesses. Businesses can gain both attention and clients from use of social media, such as Facebook. With one click of the "Like" button on a company's Facebook page, users can gain access a wealth of information about the company- and the company can gain even more attention when "Friends" of the user see that the user "Likes" the company's page on the user's "Newsfeed".
    Furthermore, many people often find themselves bustling through their day; when many cannot even find time to cook a proper dinner and instead resort to fast food, who has the time to sit down and watch television or read a magazine? This limits many people's exposure to television and magazine advertisements. However, with the growing popularity of social networking and smart phones, people have time to log onto Facebook even if they are on-the-go. This makes social media websites such as Facebook great tools for marketing businesses- and most definitely a must-have.

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  6. Nowadays, social media has taken over the internet. In order to become involved, it is definitely beneficial to become involved with Facebook and other social medias. Creating a facebook account is no longer just for personal purposes, but to promote organizations and companies as well. Organizations and companies create profiles to display pictures, supporters (friends), information, upcoming events, etc. It is simpler to condense all information into one webpage. However, there are drawbacks to creating a facebook account for organizations and/or companies. People may use this as public space to post complaints and dissatisfactions. Organizations and companies have to constantly update their information and/or post events, in order to keep up with the trends and their company’s progress. Social media has such a great impact to the society, that organizations and companies starting to hire people just to update information and events on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other social medias.

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  7. As we can see facebook is the future. With the technology it has almost anything can happen or be planned though it. Since it reaches the most amount of people, any business will want to use Facebook as a tool. It is great for publicity. If a person wants to know more details about somethign they are most likely going to google it. If it is a hotel two of the top three searches will most likely be the hotles web site and their facebook page. Depending on what the guests wants they will choose either one. What is convenient about facebook is the wall and the ability for people to leave comments that are open to the public. Facebook already has a place for events, not saying that people won’t still send out wedding invitations but they will probably also has an event on facebook. This is because the response is quicker and again, people can post comments or questions.
    HPM 321 Rachel Frost

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