News for the Hospitality Executive |
Paris
Hotels and Social Media:
Some Lagging Behind, Others at the Forefront
By
Daniel Edward
Craig
March 1, 2011
While in
London this month, I couldn’t resist hopping on the Eurostar to
visit
Paris, where I spent four
months in Paris in 2009 on a writing sabbatical. Like so many
others, I
fell in love with the city. But my next sabbatical will take place
somewhere
with fewer distractions—like an iceberg adrift in the Arctic Ocean. Whenever I visit a city, I like to do a
sweep of hotels to
see what’s new and innovative, which can make me a dull travel
companion for
non-hoteliers. In Paris, the hotel market is in full recovery mode now,
with MKG
Hospitality reporting
an 11.5% increase in RevPAR in 2010 over 2009. In the luxury segment,
the Shangri-la
just opened its doors, the Mandarin
Oriental opens this summer, and the W
Paris is slated for January 2012. Walking into très
luxueux hotels like The Ritz
and The Crillon can be a
bit intimidating,
but a little trick I’ve learned is to pretend I’m on my cell phone—that
way staff
don’t bother me or throw me out. A great way to experience luxury
hotels
without selling a kidney to pay for a room is to have a drink in the
bar. Try
this at the Four Seasons,
Hotel
Costes or Le Meurice.
Cocktails
cost a small fortune, but it’s worth the experience. It’s interesting to note that many luxury
hotels in Paris
have little or no social media presence, calling to mind a recent
post on Hotel-Blogs.com by Guillaume Thevenot. Notable exceptions
include Le Meurice
and the Four
Seasons on
Facebook. And I like how the Ritz uses storytelling in the Behind
the Scenes section of its website. Overall, however, websites don’t
convey
the grandeur and excitement of the hotels they represent, and some are
as
quirky and difficult to navigate as the streets of Paris. I was lucky enough to spend a night in the
new Hotel
le Seven, in the 5th arrondissement, as guest of
owner
Philippe Vaurs. Vaurs is the charismatic CEO of Elegancia Hotels, an
eclectic group
of designer boutique hotels, and Hotel le Seven is one of the most
avant-garde
hotels I’ve ever seen. The hotel’s lobby and bar are fairly
non-descript, but the
rooms—wow. I stayed in an Absolute
Levitation
room, and with its floating bed, ceiling star-lights and white, puffy
bed-coverings I felt like I was sleeping on a cloud. The suites are
playful and
imaginative, with sexy mood lighting and iconic furnishings—perfect for
a
discreet rendezvous with your Parisian paramour. Each suite has a
different
theme, like Marie Antoinette, Alice in Wonderland and—my personal
favorite—James Bond. With rates starting at only €150 ($207), Hotel le
Seven is
one of Paris’s best-kept secrets. Martin is Vice President of Marketing at WIHP, a marketing company for
independent hotels. He gave me a demo of Nayumi, proprietary software
that
takes web tracking and analytics to a new level. Rather than
visitor centric, the software is revenue centric, tracking every
step in
the online sales cycle from origin to booking. The tool also has a
reputation
tracking component to help clients to understand the relationship
between
reputation and revenue. In my mind this is the future: revenue
management will
be fully integrated with reputation management. You can keep tabs on
Martin via
his blog, as I intend to do. Not only has the TripAdvisor widget boosted
search engine
rankings and made the website stickier—visitors are less likely to
leave in
search of traveler reviews—it has also made hotel managers more
accountable and
attentive to guest feedback, tripling the response rate to reviews from
GMs.
Surprisingly, in terms of conversions it’s the company’s lower-end
brands that
have benefited most, suggesting that the combination of transparency,
quality
and value is a powerful incentive for travelers to book. Cedric and Romain expect to have more
results to report in
the next month or two. In the meantime, check out this reputation
management case study involving Accor and social media monitoring
company Synthesio. And that, mes amis,
is my roundup of Parisian hotels.
Copyright © 2011 Daniel Edward Craig |
Contact:
Daniel Edward Craig |
Also See: | B&B
or Big-Box? Social Media Stirs the Sleeping Micro-Giant of the Lodging
Industry / Daniel Edward Craig / February 2011 |
Social
Media and Storytelling for Hotels / Daniel Edward Craig / February
2011 |
|
A
Round-up of Social Media and Reputation Monitoring Tools for Hotels
/ Daniel Edward Craig / February 2011 |
|
The
Confidence to be Transparent: Why Accor Hotel Group Posts TripAdvisor
Reviews Directly to its Website; An interview with Jean-Luc
Chrétien, Executive VP Marketing & Distribution, Accor /
Daniel Edward Craig / December 2010 |
|
A
Positive Spin on Negative Reviews / Daniel Edward Craig / November
2010 |
|
Walking
After Midnight: How to Avoid Being Bumped from Your Hotel / Daniel
Edward Craig / October 2010 |
|
Why Everyone Gets a Hotel Room Upgrade... But You / Daniel Edward Craig / April 2008 |