In the first half of the year, the Spanish chain accumulates seven million interactions and generates revenues of more than 42 million euros
Meliá Hotels International, the Spanish hotel company with the greatest presence in social networks, has marked a new milestone after exceeding seven million followers worldwide, the result of strategic management that integrates the vision of marketing, innovation, technology and transversal digital talent To the whole organization.
This is how the company conceives its transformation into social networks, a new paradigm of relationship with its stakeholders, which has served as a springboard to boost the recognition of its brands, its reputation and the performance of its business.
The hotel company, which was named one of the 10 most influential Ibex 35 companies in social networks (according to the Icarus Analytics Panel, carried out in 2018 by Epsilon Technologies), has built a solid community around the 545 accounts that add its brands and 164 hotels in the different networks, thus achieving a social presence in 167 countries.
All this has allowed to reach, in the first six months of the year, seven million interactions with his followers, almost double that of the same period of the previous year, and generate up to 24% of traffic to melia.com, which has meant attributed sales of more than 42 million euros.
These results have been possible thanks to the impulse of the global social media strategy, integrated in the digital transformation of the company, and which has been a case study by Hootsuite. This study highlights the ability of the hotel to improve the relationship with the customer, humanize and increase brand recognition, increase traffic to its sales channel and attract talent to the company.
To achieve better results, Meliá Hotels International has relied on the main technological partners of the social environment, such as Hootsuite, for the integral management of its accounts; Flowics, for the management of user-generated content; or Traackr, as a tool of Influencer Marketing, key to having managed to increase 167% mentions of influencers to the brand.
As Santiago Garcia Solimei, Director of Global Social Media at Meliá Hotels International, explains, “More and more customers are using social networks to discover our products. It is a fundamental tool that is present and works at all stages of the client's journey: from the discovery, inspiration and experience lived in the hotel told in real time, to one of the most important parts, the recommendation when the stay ends ".
The new “social culture” implemented in the company has also been fundamental. Thanks to the creation of an internal ambassadors program, Meliá has managed to amplify its contents and generate up to 143 million additional impressions in 2018. The company's top executive, Gabriel Escarrer, opened his Linkedin and Twitter accounts last year, becoming one of the few Spanish CEOs of the Ibex 35 with active presence in social networks, which has served to reinforce his opinion leader in the tourism industry and give greater visibility to the company's intangible values and public commitments, such as its social and environmental positioning.