Responding to expansion of Facebook’s location-based check-ins as a hotelier

Sep 6, 2011

Facebook is revamping its location-based check-in product also know as Places. Starting last Friday, you may have noticed that the “X check-ins” verbiage has been removed from Places Pages and merged Facebook Pages and has been replaced with “X were here”.

Published: 06 Sep 2011

Facebook is revamping its location-based check-in product also know as Places. Starting last Friday, you may have noticed that the “X check-ins” verbiage has been removed from Places Pages and merged Facebook Pages and has been replaced with “X were here”.

(Facebook recently expanded its location-based check-ins as part of a wider update. Previously, users could only “check in” to locations using the Places feature on a smartphone. Now, one can add location from anywhere, regardless of what device you are using, or whether it is a status update, photo or Wall post. As a part of this, Facebook phased out the mobile-only Places feature).

With these changes Facebook will be phasing out its Facebook Places feature on mobile devices. This move comes from making the interaction and experience more like Facebook versus trying to compete with and mirror location-based check-in sites like Foursquare by adding the Place as a descriptor on status updates versus solely being the post.

Users will still be able to “check-in” to businesses but instead through their status updates by adding City Location and Tagging a Business in a post. This will be a benefit to businesses since location-based activities wouldn’t be restricted to just mobile devices but will be available on desktop/laptop computers as well.

With this change Facebook is looking at location in three different ways – Where I’m going, Where I am, and Where I have been. Depending on how Facebook continues to roll this out could be a huge plus for hotels to play in the location-based marketing space.

Facebook will still continue to offer the free check-in deals feature to businesses and these changes will not have any impact on your hotel’s Facebook Places pages. These changes are only impacting the check-in interaction that a user conducts on their mobile device. We still recommend that hotels merge their duplicate places pages and claim Place Pages of any of their business entities.

(This article first appeared on Sabre Hospitality Solutions Blog, contributed by Amanda Webb).