Why Smart Hospitality Pros Should Tune into TikTok for Golden Insights
By Emin Kara | September 5, 2023
TikTok is much more than a platform for viral dances and challenges. For the hospitality industry, it’s a goldmine of real-time insights and trends. By actively engaging with the platform, businesses can make informed decisions that resonate with their audience, ensuring their offerings remain fresh, relevant, and in line with market demand. In a rapidly evolving industry, staying ahead of the curve is crucial, and TikTok might just be the tool to ensure that.
First, you must understand that social media platforms are influencing people’s decisions. Whatever people see on these platforms is what they want, holidays, relationship styles, products, experiences etc.
With its emphasis on short, captivating videos, TikTok offers a raw, unfiltered view of user preferences, behaviors, and trends. The platform’s algorithm promotes content that resonates most with its users, giving businesses a clear window into what’s popular and trending.
So how can platforms like TikTok influence your business decisions?
Trends: There are CONSTANTLY new trends appearing on platforms like TikTok whether it be funny skits, dances or types of holidays, destinations, hotels, restaurants or experiences!
To put this into perspective, people were travelling from all over the world to go to Turkey and try the viral San Sebastian cheesecake! TikTok gives out views like they’re going out of fashion; a single video from an influencer about one of your products could easily spiral into a viral wave for you. The majority of the time you don’t need an influencer, but if you want the easy quick route then there you go!
Essentially what I’m getting at is, that you can search these trends, find out what’s popping and then implement them into your hospitality business to catch the trend by posting short video content to these platforms! This can be particularly effective for the F&B sector of hospitality, allowing for new inspiration to update menus.
Guest Feedback: It’s no secret people LOVE sharing their experiences and location on social media. Tracking mentions on social media should be crucial to know EXACTLY what people like and dislike about your business. Most of the time they’ll give you the solution right then and there in the post.
Take this video for example.If you don’t want to watch the video, basically, a woman talks about her disdain for sleeping in hotel covers and how she brings a sleeping bag to every hotel she goes to.
What would the solution be? Place a card in the room explaining the cleaning process the sheets go through, and provide a black light so they can inspect it themselves. This would fix a consumer complaint AND increase UGC because it’s something different!
Competitor Analysis: Social media is the EASIEST way to gain insights into your competitors and what they do well! Look at their videos, strategies, campaigns and offerings and look to see what people’s reactions are and how much they get on those pieces of content! The ones that are received well should be studied and compared to your own business. If you’re missing a link, then you should definitely implement!
Regular monitoring: Either you, an individual from your business or a team should manage the monitoring of social media to find new trends! TikTok has the best SEO (search engine optimization) of any platform; that’s why 40% of the younger generation use it to find new businesses or products instead of Google! Simply type in things like “I hate when hotels”, “I love when hotels”, “things I wish hotels would do”, “hotel freebies”, “best dining experience ever”, or search your business name to see if anyone has made UGC on your business.
Engage With Users: Respond to comments, participate in challenges, or create polls. Open up a dialogue with your customers or potential customers to find and provide what they’re looking for. People have given their extra time to even just comment something as simple as a fire emoji, so make sure you give them a detailed response!
Now, there’s much more to these platforms than I can describe in a single article. So, I’ll be in the Hotel Interactive threads ready to answer any questions you may have, to offer guidance in your efforts to utilize social media! So, get curious, get to work and get winning!
