Hotel Social CRM: Are guests who follow your resort on social media more likely to make a return trip?

Last week we compared to ability to email a guest to the likelihood of them making a return trip. This week we’re following a similar thread but looking at social media activity. Does someone following your resort on Facebook or Twitter (or both) impact the likelihood they’ll come back? Here’s what we found.

The Goods
For our analysis we used survey data from a half-dozen resorts across two seasons. As we fill out social CRM data for our clients we’ll have a more complete view of this next year, but in the meantime the self-reported aspect carries value by eliminating people who clicked “like” or “follow” but aren’t active enough to remember doing so. Here are the lodging return rates of the four groups that came from this sample:

Facebook is the clear winner, with “neither” and “Twitter” nearly even at the bottom. Interestingly, rather than a cumulative effect from following on both Facebook and Twitter, it looks to be more averaged with Twitter following pulling down the return rate slightly rather than boosting it higher.

What This Means
Emails are added to the database through dozens of forms. So, while the email analysis carries these same questions, the chicken-and-the-egg scenario is especially tricky with social due to the organic nature of most “follow” or “like” actions made by users.

So the question we come to is this: are Facebook fans more likely to return because of the content you share or are they more likely to return because loyal customers are more likely seek out and find your brand on social media? While the answer may not be easily attainable, we’d imagine it’s a little bit of both.

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