The Hilton Colombo is a multi-story resort located in the center of Colombo’s business district. The hotel is known for its excellent business amenities and spacious meeting venues. The Hilton Colombo was named the leading Sri Lankan hotel at the 2012 world travel awards. Nevertheless, it has a very low social media presence. The social media presence of Hilton Hotel Colombo is low compared to its competitors. The hotel is only active on Facebook and is yet to venture into the social media spheres of Twitter, blogging, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn and others.
The Hilton’s Facebook page is a typical hotel affair. It features images of mouthwatering delicacies, visits by VIPs, special events and so on. The page is liked by over 17,500 fans. Prospective guests can use the Facebook page to book the hotel through an app called ‘book your stay’. Another app lists all the events happening at the hotel whilst a video app showcases food related videos and makes the visitor yearn to taste the culinary masterpieces. Encouragingly, the Facebook page highlights many of the hotel’s CSR activities.
Pictures of hotel staff renovating schools and planting trees are sure to resound well with fans and boost the public image of the hotel. Social media platforms like Facebook open a way for stakeholders to interact directly with a company’s CSR program; it enables businesses to keep a tab on stakeholder sentiment on any emerging issue.
Apart from its Facebook page, the Hilton Colombo has no other social media presence. This is unacceptable for a renowned five star hotel. The following stats were taken from a Hubspot research and they show the power of social media as a marketing tool.
- 63% of companies using social media say it has increased marketing effectiveness among other benefits.
- Businesses that blog regularly get more than 5 times the traffic than those who don’t.
- There are 152,000 blogs on the internet and the global population of blog readers keeps growing. Most people read blogs more than once a day.
- Companies that blog have 55% more visitors
- 1 out of every 7 minutes online is spent on Facebook. The average user spends about 7 hours per month on Facebook.
- More than ½ of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on social networks and more than 75% of users are likely to recommend brands that they follow. Companies that use Twitter generate twice as more leads than those who do not.
To fully utilize the power of social media the Hilton Colombo should establish itself in more social media channels. Setting up accounts in Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and others will help the hotel to reach a wider audience. This is even more essential as other five star hotels in Colombo are expanding their reach by being active in the social media sphere. If the hotel acts now and implements an effective overarching social media strategy it will reap lucrative rewards in the long run.