Hotels & the Social Web - Some suggestions for Yotel

In my last (German) post I wrote about the Intercontinental Group launching a Video site. Each video features one Interconti employee showing viewers around in the hotel's many destinations. I like the idea of providing real value to travellers, instead of boring them with the hotel's features. However, there are some points to be improved, especially what the social web aspects are concerned. Not featuring the videos on YouTube being only one of them.

Today I read about the Yotel opening at London Gatwick in May. I love the concept of offering affordable hotel rooms - by London standards, that is - and killer design. Who cares about the lack of windows? Nobody wants to look at airports or railways, right? Simon Woodroffe of Yotel is a very smart guy. But, has he not heard of the social web?

I searched for Yotel at Flickr and Youtube. But to no avail. All I found was one of the company's pics from the site. I am not saying, that every hotel should devise a social media strategy mandatorily. But any fresh concept like the Yotel would definitely benefit from it.

So here are a few very basic suggestions for Simon Woodroffe:

• install a blog just as was done for Aloft by the Starwood Group (minus the Second Life)
  
• Simon sounds like a really intriguing person to me, he is predisposed to be a killer CEO blogger
• select a few bloggers, contact them & involve them before the launch or
• at least invite them just like you would invite travel journalists
• tip: give bloggers preferred treatment, they blog for love, not for their boss
• provide more pictures & add them to Flickr
• make a video and add it to Youtube
• link to all of these visual goodies from the hotel website or blog
• once up and running, encourage guests to rate the Yotel
• make it easy for them by providing a link to Tripadvisor or their cousins from your site
• link to the reviews from your site
• monitor Technorati for individual blogs of guest for posts on Yotel & link to them from your site

Enough for tonight. Again, I am not saying, social web is a must. But it is here to stay, so we might as well embrace it - regardless of our industry.

Also read my following articles on travel 2.0 in English:

Fake Travel Reviews are no Issue - Interview with Ian Rumgay from Tripadvisor continued
About Hotel 2.0 & Travel 2.0 - Interview with Ian Rumgay from TripAdvisor
Hotel 2.0 - Interview with Opus Hotel CEO Blogger Daniel Craig
Travel planning today - Greetings from the Easter Island III
Marketing manifesto for the travel industry - Interpretation of Jeff Jarvis

More to come at English+posts.