A new report into the social media presence of luxury hotels and brands has found that The Dorchester Collection comes out on top in terms of the average number of followers per property.
L.I.K.E. Consulting, based in Germany, looked at the reach of a dozen hotel chains, on an individual property-by-property basis as well as at a brand level, across eight social media platforms.
Dorchester consists of ten hotels and has 614,000 followers across the social media platforms analysed, giving it an average of 61,000 followers per property. Number two on the list is Peninsula Hotels, which coincidentally also has a portfolio of ten properties, each of which averages 53,000.
W Hotels, the lifestyle brand from Starwood, has a significantly more hotels on its books but still manages to come third on the list, averaging 42,000 followers for each of its 49 hotels.
In terms of brands, Ritz-Carlton comes out top in absolute terms, attracting more than 3 million followers to its corporate branded platforms. Four Seasons comes next with 1.2m with St Regis completing the top three with 410,000 followers.
While these numbers take into account eight social media platforms, it found that Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are the most dominant on a property level, accounting for 95% of all 7 million-plus followers of the properties.
It says properties "should avoid spending time on Google+, Flickr or Pinterest, as they are not frequented well enough to generate any noticeable returns."
YouTube is " barely used by properties and brands alike", the study says, suggesting " the surveyed companies have yet to take full advantage of the potentially interesting platform. The main reason for the lack of interest of companies in YouTube currently lies in the heavy investment of resources, such as time and money to create videos and other relevant content."
The study references emerging social channels such as WhatsApp and SnapChat, without factoring them into the follower totals.
WhatsApp "could either be used as a booking assistant, concierge service, while the guest is present, or as a follow-up for feedback after departure" while W Hotels' use of personalized filters on its SnapChat account is mentioned.
For more details on the report, click here.
Related reading from Tnooz:Sharing UGC gets a thumbs up for luxury hotels (Sept 16)
TripAdvisor and Booking.com take half of luxury hotel reviews on the web (Sept 16)
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