Social Media and Marketing

The hospitality industry in the UK continues to use Twitter in new ways to reach out to the traveller, be it for bookings or during their in-destination phase.

Published: 15 Oct 2010

The hospitality industry in the UK continues to use Twitter in new ways to reach out to the traveller, be it for bookings or during their in-destination phase.

Premier Inn has introduced an innovative Twitter-based `virtual` concierge service for its guests.The hotel chain says it is shaking up the traditional hotel concierge and has become the first budget hotel chain to offer a concierge style service to its guests.

To access Premier Inn’s weekend Twitter concierge service, guests must tweet @PremierInn concierge and simply ask for recommendations. The weekend Twitter concierge service will initially run as a trial for one month on Friday evenings in October with a view to extending it if it is proved of value to guests.

Assessing the utility of such services, a report filed by independent.co.uk, highlighted that Twitter’s format means that communication will invariably be somewhat stilted; multiple suggestions must be delivered through multiple tweets and there is always a need for extreme brevity. It also mentioned that a study by the University of California Berkeley and Yahoo! even found that while concierges are happy to make strong recommendations in person, they are reticent to do so on Twitter, when guests can’ t be engaged in a dialogue to understand their needs and desires.

New trends

Even as Premier Inn described its move as the very first Twitter concierge service to the UK, others like budget hotel chain Travelodge, too, have come up with interesting moves.

Earlier this month, in what too was described as an unprecedented move in the UK, Travelodge launched an exclusive weekly discounted weekend room offer for its Twitter followers. The campaign was launched with a focus on UK cities in a bid to encourage more Britons to visit one of the country’s great cities such as Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester or Edinburgh.

This exclusive Twitter offer was only available to Travelodge twitter followers.

Travelodge chose to offer a two-night stay in a top UK city centre destination for under £50 (for both nights) for a limited period. The offer was tweeted and followers were be able to book immediately at www.travelodge.co.uk.