In the past six years, social media has exploded on the hotel scene, creating an opportunity for many hoteliers to not only engage guests, but measure effectiveness. When Twitter became a household name in 2009, most business owners thought social media was a fad and hotels didn't take it seriously as a platform to communicate with guests. Since then, social media continues to evolve and new networks are introduced that affect the way we deliver news, communicate with guests, promote specials, and manage critics. Learn what is new, how you might incorporate it, and the opportunity you have to measure effectiveness. READ MORE

As the use of social media becomes more pervasive, its impact on businesses becomes more significant. Digital conversations about your hotel are taking place all the time, and if you're not engaging in that dialogue, it's a huge missed opportunity to strengthen your relationship with consumers. By taking advantage of social media interactions, you learn more about your customers and their experiences with your company. Furthermore, you can leverage that information to enhance your operations, create new sources of value for your guests, and influence perceptions about your brand in the global marketplace—ultimately increasing your bottom line. READ MORE

More and more guests post reviews online, tweet about their experience or post photos about their idyllic holiday getaways. This trend is gaining considerable momentum and many potential hotel guests place a lot of importance on these online opinions and will often make their decisions on which hotel to book based on these recommendations. Hotels can see this as an opportunity to boost their online presence, their brand awareness and grow their online community of fans. What tools can hotels use to encourage guests to post positive online reviews, tweets and photos? How can they increase customer loyalty and see their guests as their best marketers? READ MORE

Social media has become a primary channel for hotels to market their brand and for guests to share experiences, thus controlling and shaping the reputations of hotels large and small every day. In a crisis, social media can be a critical tool for keeping your customer base informed, but also for monitoring potentially damaging opinions and finding a resolution. Social media can help with real-time, responsive communications, understanding followers' concerns and swiftly allaying them with direct and transparent messaging. READ MORE

What a difference a year made in hospitality technology. For Americans, Chip-and-PIN/EMV appears to be the new Y2K - those who prepared are feeling terribly anti-climactic, and those who ostriched, so far, haven't felt much pain. It did, however, provide more widespread awareness of the need for credit card tokenization, and data security in general. People who previously hadn't moved to the cloud out of fear of losing data security, now started doing so to actually increase it. READ MORE