I had the opportunity to interview the Director of Online Marketing for one of the world’s largest Hotel brands this week. I asked him about Social Media’s impact on hotels and how his job has changed as a result of social media. Here’s the interview:

Q: How has social media changed the way hotels operate?

A: Social Media has changed the way hotels operate in the sense that they must be more accountable for their actions. If something goes wrong, the guest will take to social media platforms to tell all of their friends and others that may stay at that hotel. If the hotel doesn’t respond, then that makes it even worse, so hotels/brands have to stay on top of social media and respond quickly.

Q: How do you respond quickly with so many people out their posting?

A: Our Company has tools that allow the hotels to pull up positive and negative comments whenever they want, so it puts it all in one place and they can respond. We also have a team on our Guest Assistance team that is dedicated to watching social media for negative posts and responding within 1 hour. A lot has changed in a short amount of time and I know it will only get more sophisticated as more platforms launch and hotels/brands being to support them.

Q: What are the biggest changes you’ve seen?

A: The biggest challenge is obviously keeping up with all of the comments and feedback guests provide using social media. We have a dedicated team that helps watch for negative reviews, but most brands have an agency that helps them keep up with comments, posts, tweets, etc… With new platforms coming onboard all the time, we have to determine if that platform should be part of our brand strategy or not.

Q: What is the biggest surprise that you’ve encountered this year in regards to how social media has changed the way you do business?

A: The biggest surprise is just the landscape of the apps because as a brand, we have to stay on top of all the apps to know if they are right for us.

Q: What is your goal in using social media, what do you hope to accomplish for your brand?

A: Our goal in social media is to engage with our customers. We don’t want to “talk to them,” but rather “with them.” We always ask questions, do polls, post images and see what people are up to. As we do that, we see what our audience responds to the most and then we do more of that. We hope in the end that with our engagement and timely customer service that they will stay with us again and recommend us to their friends and family.

Q: Do you think your social media goals align with what your customers are looking for with social media?

A: I do feel that the guests are looking more for fun engagement with brands and research shows that as well. Guests want to know they can speak to us on our different platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Trip Advisor, etc…- and that a real person is going to answer them, and quickly, as we do that. We have several departments that touch this aspect and it all aligns to making our guests happy.

Q: Do you have a favorite form of social media yourself?

A: I prefer Twitter myself because with my daily schedule being so busy, getting 140 character updates is good; it is easy to get information quickly.

Q: What do you see happening in the future?

A: Things are going to become more personal and more customizable.

Q: Do you think social media is here to stay?

A: For sure! People love to connect, so social media will never go away in my opinion. Whether they connect with friends, family, brands, team, etc.., people love to have that connection and studies of younger generations show this as well.

Q: What things do you do today that you wouldn’t have done 5 years ago before the explosion of social media?

A: First of all, social media was not even a part of anyone’s job description even 4 years ago. The biggest change is having to make sure we keep up on comments to guests and that is hard with all the other duties I handle including display advertising, online strategy, direct response creative, social media, brand emails, etc..

Q: What do you love about your job?

A: I like the interaction every day, which that is with customers, hotel employees, team members, agency partners or whoever is in the office. I also love the strategy side of my job. I get to work with the great marketing team here and work with great agencies to make our hotels as great as they can be.

Have you ever wondered how and why a NFL team picks a hotel when they’re on the road? Even though I worked in the NHL for many years, I never really knew what went into picking the hotel. The following is an interview with a NFL team operations executive. In additional to the NFL, this executive has worked many other major league sports and global sporting events.

Q – When do you start planning what hotels the team will stay in?

A – All site visits are done in March-April. Once we get our schedule in April, we contact the hotels we liked to see if they have our dates available and go from there! Each site visit takes about 45 min to an hour and some cities find us seeing anywhere from 5 to 20 properties. It’s a lot and once you get a feel for it, you can usually determine very quickly if the hotel is a good fit for a possible stay.

Q – What are you looking for when you visit a hotel?

A – We would look at everything at the hotel from how the team would arrive through to when it would depart. That means first going outside to understand what the block was like for bus staging – will buses unload to the curb or will they unload street-side? Would the travel party have to cross a road or valet area? What would a hotel’s plans be if so. We’d want the street to close for our arrival if so and would sort that with the city police department. We’d want to know many buses could fit curbside and with bus #1 carrying the Head Coach being directly or as close to the main entrance, how would the remaining buses use the sidewalk. Hotel would be advised to have executive staff to escort key personnel to their rooms or meeting spaces at the time of arrival. We would look at entrance doors – are they revolving, automatic, can they be propped open?

Q- Okay, so once you’re inside, what are you looking at?

A- Inside, we’re looking for the path to the elevators and any service elevators in the area. How big are the elevators? Do they require key card access to specific floors? If so, we’d need to arrange access for key people on select or all floors we are using. We ask all hotels to staff the elevators and lock them off to just our floors for the arrival so we can get in and out of the way faster, cause less of an inconvenience to guests and maintains as secure an environment as possible. We look at where arrival tables with room key packets will be staged between the buses and the elevators.

Q- When the team arrives at the hotel, how long does it take to get everyone from the busses to their rooms?

A – We time our arrivals and target 7 minutes total. If it is longer than 10 min due to minimal elevators or other issues, that isn’t good. We let the hotel know who is allowed to make room changes and when bedchecks will be.

Q- Once you know how you’ll arrive, what else do you look for at the hotel?

A – From there, we look at sleeping rooms and see a king, double and all possible suite types. We note the floor layout of the hotel floors and if it is the same on each level. Are there suites on each floor or select floors? How many total? How many styles? Rooms that connect to suites? We note where exit/emergency doors are and where the best site lines are so we can place security stations overnight.

We take over full floors – usually two consecutive floors for the players so we note how many kings vs doubles are on the floors. We note if there is key access or key card access. We note size of beds (king, queen or full) and if beds have pillow-topper or other mattress nuances. We lay on a bed to test firmness and we note where the plugs are relative to all beds. We make note of any unusual amenities, if rooms are uncomfortably small and pay very careful attention to bathrooms. We also look to see if there a safe in the room, a docking station of any kind, how is the water pressure, what are the room service hours?

Q – What’s so important about the bathroom?

A- W are looking closely at the size overall, size of shower, is there a shower tub combination or just shower? How high is the shower head? How close is the toilet to a door/wall? These are big guys we take care of so you have to ensure they are as comfortable as you can make them.

Bathroom at the St Regis Hotel

Q- Outside of the rooms, what else do you need in the hotel?

A- We have zero interest in hotel restaurants and just because they are athletes doesn’t mean we care about the gym. We don’t.

Q – You mentioned you need meeting space, what is that for? What are you looking for?

A – We look at meeting space to see specifically how the hotel would lay out our meeting room needs. Is it on an exclusive floor? If it is larger hotel or convention property, how do they handle clients sharing space and maintaining privacy so no one is walking through the team’s space? Privacy is very key! Each meeting room has different, specific needs so we discuss those. Generally, we look at ceiling height, if lighting panels are individually controlled in each room, discuss the temperature, pre-function space (a lot of hotels have very little furniture in pre-function space so we ensure residential furniture can be brought from elsewhere so players and coaches have comfortable chairs outside the meeting rooms.) We look at meeting room signage holders, determine if separate elevators or escalators access the meeting room floors or if the regular elevators to sleeping rooms are used. We discuss security checkpoints, set-up times, policies and review the meal room set-up, menu and service schedule at length.

The team meets in this space, the team eats in this space and it’s used for logistics. We look at how the team would leave to go to the buses for departure on game day since most players come from Pre-Game Meal to the buses not their sleeping rooms. We review how long buses can park in staging areas, where overflow bus staging is and where our Equipment Truck would park overnight. We discuss cab and town car usage and preferred vendors, bellman needs if any, daily newspaper drops, wake-up calls, calls to rooms late night and autograph seekers. 

Q- how do you decide on location?

A – We determine distance to the airport and to the stadium and prefer downtown hotels closer to the stadium but each city is different.

Q- Anything else that’s helpful when picking a hotel?

A- We want to know if they have hosted teams before and if so, from what league and who. Is the hotel busier on the weekends or more during the week for business travel? What would we need to do to arrange late check-out if we are playing a night game? Is there an extra ballroom available for a light practice/walk-through? Is there a college nearby with a field in the event it is a west coast trip and we’d arrive Friday night and need to do a walk-through Saturday morning? Is there a pool for the same west coast trip in case a Strength Coach wants to work someone out that way. How big is the pool?

Q- Do you get special request from the players about the hotels?

A – We’ve heard every request on the road from wanting specific bedding to room service needs. I’ve changed beds, made beds, stripped beds, set up ballrooms and stuffed key envelopes. It’s a team effort between us and the hotel and having a great rapport makes a world of difference. We partner with them to take care of our family/our clients the team.

Q- Any superstitions about hotels?

A -Regarding superstitions, we have sometimes changed hotels from season to season if we have had consecutive losses in previous stays at the same hotel. 

Q- What types of hotels are you staying in? Do you have any personal Favorites?

A -The team stayed at a majority of Ritz’s, a few Four Seasons, a St. Regis and maybe an InterContinental or Westin. The hotel’s staff can make a big difference! Some hotel staff makes it very fun, a little less high-stress which it really is so that’s a difference maker.

Q – And your personal favorites?

A-The St. Regis in San Francisco is a definite favorite (so love their rooms and bathrooms) as is the Ritz Downtown ATL (amazing staff).

Q – The St Regis San Francisco – I knew I liked you for a reason J Great hotel, I agree. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me about how you pick a hotel for the team. It’s very interesting.

Followup:

Q – Do the players earn points/miles for their travel
A – No, the team flys on a Charter flight, so no one earns miles. As for hotels, no, the players and “advance team” who do the planning do not earn points. It’s part of the contract.