Bangkok-based Minor Hotel Group’s Anantara Hotels, Resorts & Spas won HOTELS’ 2014 Social Hotel Award for Best Facebook Page, Brand.
For the third straight year, HOTELS is honoring the best of social media in the hotel industry with the Social Hotel Awards. The awards are presented in seven categories ranging from Best Facebook Page to Best Digital Video Campaign, and for each category, both a brand and a property are honored. In 2014, HOTELS received more than 250 global entries for the awards, which were chosen by a panel of social media experts and the staff editors of HOTELS.
Anantara boosted its Facebook following with its Friends With Benefits campaign, which ran in September 2013. With a limited budget of approximately US$10,000 the brand worked with an agency to implement the booking engine and Travel Concierge applications, both launched in December 2013. Anantara also launched an online concierge that guests and potential guests could utilize, which proved helpful given Thailand’s political turmoil.
The Friends With Benefits campaign increased the brand’s Facebook fan base 37% in one month. From January 2013 to December 2013 a total of 34,750 fans that visited Facebook or its apps then went directly to anantara.com. Of those fans visiting the page, almost 80% were new visitors. The new booking engine on the Facebook page has already amounted to US$20,000 in direct bookings, and the fan page is consistently one the top five referral traffic sources for Anantara’s brand website.
For a complete list of the 2014 Social Hotel Awards winners as well as a rundown of the judges, see the October issue of HOTELS.