Corporate Cohesion Through Facebook Content

With more than 4,000 properties around the globe, each hotel in the AccorHotels (www.accorhotels.com) brand has its own Facebook page. These Facebook pages receive around 670,000 check-ins per month — representing hundreds of thousands of opportunities to showcase our hotels to potential guests. An empty Facebook page is no longer an option! 

AccorHotels has a goal of having 100 percent of hotels active on social media, particularly Facebook. Hoteliers are encouraged to use the brand resources provided as well as their own customers, to keep Facebook pages on brand, current, and as a direct line of communication to their customers. It is impossible to keep an eye on 4,000 Facebook pages on a daily basis, but Accor provides its properties with best practices and tools to help promote hotels while staying true to the brand. AccorHotels created a solution called the Social Desk, which provides hoteliers with an inspiration platform, a training platform, and publishing tools from technology partner, Hootsuite.

Through the Social Desk, hotels are provided with specific brand guidelines. At its simplest level, it’s important to provide properties with examples of what is considered “good content.” Brand assets are included, and examples of properties that are doing a great job with Facebook are showcased to give a visualization of how to approach clean, consistent, customer-focused content.

Guests comment, like and share AccorHotels official images, but they also create their own content. When guests engage with Facebook pages, hotels have an opportunity to join the conversation, thanking customers for nice comments or pictures. Much like the old-fashioned strength of “word of mouth,” social content from our guests give other prospective customers an unbiased endorsement of the hotel.  

Listening and Responding 

with Facebook

As we all know — social media is also a platform for sharing complaints. Studies show that 75 percent of travelers use social media to research destinations, so it’s crucial that negative comments on Facebook be addressed swiftly and properly. Brand cohesion must also encompass the management of customer complaints.

As part of a hotel’s Facebook strategy, it is important that there is a plan for not only monitoring and responding to customer complaints, but bringing one relevant answer to the customer, across any and all channels. Similar to the templates and brand guidelines provided with AccorHotels’ Social Desk initiative, outlining a clear course of action for complaints helps lay the groundwork for a quick resolution, and opportunity to positively re-engage with the customer. 

When we set our 100 percent adoption social media goal in 2015 only 18 percent of our worldwide properties were populating their Facebook page. Today, around 52 percent of them do it on a daily basis. As more and more hotels embrace Facebook, the end game is not likes or number of fans; it is engagement.

What are your hobbies? 

Working with my
associates on a personal project: the ‘’Fédération Française de l’Apéritif’’, a shop in Paris, and a community of epicureans on social networks. 

What technologies excite you? 

Mainly mobile technologies, new ways of payment — any technology that’s useful and makes your life easier.

What is one other job that you would like to try?
General practitioner.

What is one goal that you would like to
achieve in your life? Being happy, with no regard to what my job is or where I live.

What three people would you invite to lunch?
Gordon Ramsey for the food. Shane MacGowan for the drinks. Tom Neale for the conversation.