Olery case study: Hotel Casa 400 Amsterdam

“It is nice to see guests placing photo’s and experiences on their Twitter feed”

Hotel Casa 400 Amsterdam

Since the opening of the hotel in April 2010 hotel Casa 400 in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) is using different kinds of social media to stay in touch with their guests. Sales and Marketing executive Eline Gerdes, told Olery how they recognize the convenience of Social Media.

Added value of social media

“The use of different kinds of social media is a perfect addition to Casa 400’s modern appearance. Besides that social media offers the perfect possibility to interact with known and potential new guests.”  Eline Gerdes says most of their guests are active on Twitter and Facebook.

Sharing guest experiences

“Most guests place a text on our Twitter or Facebook page after they have left to share their experience with others. For Hotel Casa 400 itself, it is nice to see guests placing photo’s and sharing experiences on their Twitter page and this gives us a great opportunity to react and build a relationship with our guest. ” Guests also seem to notice how helpful social media can be. “We once had a guest asking via Twitter for some extra coffee during their business meeting.”

Social media usage by hotels

Because Hotel Casa 400 is so dedicated to social media, Eline Gerdes regrets to see how many hotels still don’t seem to see how important social media can be for hotel marketing strategies. “I don’t think all hotels have to be active on social media, but they should make use of social media to see what people are saying about their hotel. Therefore, an overview or dashboard – like Olery provides hotels with – can be very helpful. An interactive dashboard, from which hotels can upload photo’s or place tweets and blogs to different sites can be fun and it only takes little of their time.”

Give followers what they want

Eline Gerdes thinks that when using social media hotels should make sure they know what their followers would like to see and how they stay interesting for their followers. “ It is very important that you stay surprising and refreshing, don’t just look from  a marketing or sales perspective.” She also points out that it is important for hotel employees to know the social media activities of the hotel and what the strategies and targets are.

Automatic messages

Auto-messages are an absolute don’t.” People can find automatic messages really annoying, these are really impersonal and only make things worse. Instead, show empathy and try to interact.”

Return on investment

Eline Gerdes acknowledges that the Return on investment of social media is still hard to calculate. By setting targets and keeping statistics you can see the positive effects of using social media. “ People can point out they found our hotel by using our social media. On the other hand, there will always be some who don’t. But when guests write a positive review this can be very helpful for others making the decision booking our hotel.”

Social media strategy

As for the use of social media, hotel Casa 400 is considered to be the leading hotel in The Netherlands. Even though Casa 400 does not belong to a hotel chain, they managed to gain lots of publicity on different social media sites. This proves that a good strategy and a close cooperation with a company that provides online reputation management, can lead to excellent results.

Freek Meltzer & Kim van den Wijngaard