See, hotels do sometimes monitor consumer rants on social media - even FourSquare

See, hotels do sometimes monitor consumer rants on social media – even FourSquare

Travel companies, but especially hotels, have arguably had more tips and ideas for strategy around social media than any other business sector.

Whether it is how to deal with groans from customers and instant feedback via the web to building communities on Facebook pages, hotels have been bombarded in recent years with best practice and guidelines.

Still, it often appears – apart from a few examples – that properties are generally still concentrating on a number of core areas, such as monitoring TripAdvisor reviews, reacting to comments made on Twitter and Facebook or trying promotions by way of competitions.

But there are some good examples kicking about of how disgruntled customers end up coming away with a far different impression of a brand, although when a proactive strategy is put in place by a brand to keep an eye as many channels as possible.

Bindi Karia is a UK-based Canadian executive, running the BizSpark investment and business nurturing programme within Microsoft.

During a recent visit to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Karia not only checked in at the NH Hotel physically but also found time – as many do – to check in virtually on FourSquare.

Unfortunately, Karia wasn’t too impressed with the hotel, so left the following message when she checked in.

Now, probably 95% of the time, such a seemingly mundane but rather pointed rant might be dismissed as a one-off complaint – the hotel has, after all, a four out of five rating on TripAdvisor, with the most reviewers claiming the property is “very good”.

Nevertheless, operations manager Victor van der Knaap immediately sent Karia a letter to apologise for her poor experience.

Now whether Karia got such a response because she has a healthy 5,000+ followers on Twitter and 230 friends on FourSquare, and runs a high-profile technology-led business (NH is targeting upwardly mobile professionals), or the hotel uses this tactic generally will probably never be known.

But Karia has clearly come away from the experience impressed with how her comments were handled, and so quickly.