Social hotels

Social HotelsAnalysis of the performance of hotels on social media, and the staycation market in Singapore

Tesla Insights October 2015


Marina Bay Sands is an integrated resort fronting Marina Bay in Singapore. Developed by Las Vegas Sands, it is billed as the world's most expensive standalone casino property at S$8 billion, including the land cost.

Raffles Hotel is a colonial-style luxury hotel in Singapore. It was established by Armenian hoteliers, the Sarkies Brothers, in 1887. The hotel was named after British statesman Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore. It is the flagship property of Raffles Hotels & Resorts, a subsidiary of Fairmont Raffles Hotels International.

Swissôtel the Stamford, formerly known as the Westin Stamford, is a hotel in Singapore managed by Swissôtel Hotels & Resorts. Designed by architect I.M. Pei, at a height of 226 metres (741 ft) it is one of Southeast Asia's tallest hotels. It is part of the Raffles City complex comprising two hotels, the Raffles City convention centre, Raffles City shopping centre, and an office tower. Situated at 2 Stamford Road, the hotel sits above City Hall subway station.

QUESTIONS

1) Among Marina Bay Sands, Raffles Hotel, and Swissotel, which is the most talked about

hotel on social media?

2) What made people talk so much about this hotel?

3) Which part of the year are these social media mentions made?

4) What puts this hotel at an advantage when it comes to social media publicity?


METHODOLOGY

This is an in-depth analysis of conversations and searches about Marina Bay Sands,

Raffles Hotel, and Swissotel, on all social media platforms (excluding mainstream news):

Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Blogs, Media, Forums, in Singapore in English.

We are using the latest social media listening technology, to gather all the conversations

which are scanned by our dedicated analysts in Singapore to verify relevancy to answer our

questions.

Limitation: social networks privacy settings. We are not able to listen to conversations that

people have set as private (eg: What’s App, some private conversations in Facebook).



Among Marina Bay Sands, Raffles Hotel, and Swissotel, which is the most talked about hotel on social media?

In the one-year period, Marina Bay Sands has significantly more mentions on Singaporean

social media (Blog, Forum, Micro-Blogging, Video and Photo Sharing, Consumer Opinions,

Comments, Social Network, Hosted Community)


Throughout the year, people talked a lot more about Marina Bay Sands on social media.

Mentions about Marina Bay Sands are especially high in January and September.



What made people talk so much about this hotel?

The graph above shows what people talk about when they mention Marina Bay Sands. As

expected, the infinity pool is a hot topic of mention.




Posts like the ones shown above are not uncommon. The water surface juxtaposed directly

against the Singaporean skyline creates a favourite spot for people to take photos and

share on social media. When people share these pictures and check themselves in at Marina

Bay Sands, they are generating huge publicity for the hotel on social media.



Which part of the year are these social media mentions made?


As previously noted, mentions about Marina Bay Sands are especially high in January and

September.

It should also be noted that a huge majority of the January mentions happened on 1

January, especially at midnight.


In January, year 2014 made way for 2015. This gives many people a reason to book resorts

and hotel rooms to provide a setting for cozy celebrations, as well as a place for a short

staycation. However, what made Marina Bay Sands especially mention-worthy on New Year’s

Day? Answer: the proximity to the fireworks. Taking and sharing pictures and videos of

firework displays is a highly widespread practice. When people share these pictures

and videos and check themselves in at Marina Bay Sands, they are generating huge

publicity for the hotel on social media.






In September, the Formula 1 race took place in Singapore. This is a high profile event and,

just like the New Year fireworks, people take and share plenty of photos. Again, social

media publicity was generated for Marina Bay Sands.




What puts this hotel at an advantage when it comes to social media publicity?

Some businesses boost their publicity through the use of photobooths. These booths are

usually visually interesting and the public will be encouraged to take pictures of themselves at

these booths, and then share the pictures online with check-ins and hashtags – thereby

promoting the businesses to their social networks.

The infinity pool atop Marina Bay Sands serves almost like a photobooth. People take

pictures and selfies there all the time and share them online with the “Marina Bay Sands”

brand often explicitly mentioned. Moreover, people do not have to be encouraged to do that –

they are more than willing to take the photos and mention “Marina Bay Sands”.

This happens for at least two reasons: first, Marina Bay Sands is a brand people are proud

to identify themselves with. The hotel has succeeded in building an image of wealth and

luxury, which people want to associate with. Secondly, the infinity pool with the skyline

backdrop has become something iconic, almost a landmark. People often take and share

pictures of landmarks that their social networks recognize.



Recommendations

If your hotel/business already has an image that people generally want to associate with, that

is great!

Now look for a spot – perhaps a pavilion – that has the potential to become iconic. Dedicate

resources to build the pavilion’s reputation. Try making a meme, encourage photoshoots at

the pavilion, or even try to get movies filmed at the location. Soon people will recognize

your place.

When social networks begin to recognize your pavilion, you may find yourself getting more

mentions like Marina Bay Sands does.



Conquering the Singapore staycation market

A staycation is a holiday spent in one's home country rather than abroad, or one spent at

home and involving day trips to local attractions. The staycationer market is a segment that

can be of interest to hotel management. Therefore it is useful to know: who are the ones in

Singapore looking and searching for staycations? What are the interests of the target

persona?

First and rather intuitively, affordability is one of the top priorities when Singaporeans are

searching for staycations. So it is pretty safe to assume that: if one wants to market his hotel

as a staycation destination, he almost always have to bring in “promotions” and “deals” along

into the picture. Here are the top queries related to “staycation”, in Singapore:


Top searches for staycation

staycation singapore

staycation in singapore

staycation sentosa

staycation deals

cheap staycation singapore

singapore staycation deals

best staycation singapore

staycation promotion


The following is a more interesting insight. Scrutinizing Singapore web search activities, it is

interesting to note that the people searching for “staycation” are also searching for Chinese

web services like “aliexpress”, “taobao”, “daigou”, and “新源” .

In fact, the time series for the terms “aliexpress”, “taobao”, “daigou”, and “ 新源” have

correlations of r=0.9774, r=0.9742, r=0.9723, and r=0.9712 with the original “staycation” time

series.






This may ultimately mean that many of those interested in staycations are originally from the

People’s Republic of China (PRC). This hypothesis can be supported by studying the people

searching for the correlated terms like “aliexpress” – they are also searching for things like

“cny to sgd”.

For marketers of hotels in Singapore, it may be worth steering strategies a little to

better appeal to the staycationing PRC market in Singapore.


Thank you !

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