Accor Hotels has launched a selection of apps in recent years and is active on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube besides being the first worldwide hotel chain to feature the TripAdvisor widget on its website. So how does the chain use social to improve customer service?
Accor Hotels is Europe’s largest hotel group. In 2010, the brand became the first worldwide hotel chain to feature the TripAdvisor widget on its website. The partnering with TripAdvisor allowed customers to view overall ratings of hotels in addition to directly accessing all reviews written about each hotel via the TripAdvisor widget on accorhotels.com.
Like many other hotel chains, a significant amount of hotels that are part of the Accor Hotels chain use TripAdvisor to respond to customer comments. This perhaps goes some way into explaining why one of the brand’s Twitter accounts, which appears to have been specifically made for tending to both prospective and past customers, posts only a handful of times each week.
@SalTynemouth Hi, Would you like a hotel on the island or Kowloon? See which ones suit your needs: http://t.co/IRBGLzQdbP
— Accor Hotels (@AccorhotelsAPAC) January 10, 2014
Accor Hotels has two Twitter accounts, one being specifically designed for users in the Asia Pacific region. One of the accounts, @Accorhotels, focuses more on inspiring travel ideas and promotions whilst @AccorhotelsAPAC appears to deal almost solely with customer queries. The latter does not tweet more than a few times a week whereas @Accorhotels tweets on a daily basis. The content on @Accorhotels differs from what is posted on the brand’s Facebook account. Whilst both accounts are very active and tweet/post every day, never is there identical content between the two. Sure, they are similar in style and alike regarding the type of content they choose to write about. It might be a subtle point to make but having different content on the two social networks makes their use of social look more human as opposed to those who copy and paste the same promotional news into tweets and posts.
Spend summer in the South of #Europe for as little as $59 per night w/ #ibis hotels! Spain, Italy, & Portugal await: http://t.co/saeizOPKoL
— AccorHotels official (@Accorhotels) May 2, 2014
Content posted on @Accorhotels is similar to the pins and boards on the hotel chain’s Pinterest. The majority of posts aim to inspire the viewer and feature quotes such as “We travel not to escape life but for life not to escape us” rather than pictures of the latest deals or cheap hotel rooms. Accor Hotels’ YouTube account appears to share this same purpose as videos include celebrations of customer loyalty and feel-good television campaigns.
The brand’s targeting of business owners is noticeable in the amount of videos on Accor Hotels’ YouTube account, if not just by the number of videos that have the word business in their titles.
Arguably, the introduction of an app has changed the way customers book with and contact Accor Hotels the most. The first free app was launched in 2009 but was originally only available for iPhones and could not be used by Blackberry and Android users.
Now, there is a selection of Accor Hotels-related apps. The two most prominent are the Accorhotels.com app and the Accor Hotels Asia Pacific app. Both are Android-friendly and cost nothing to download. The Accorhotels.com app allows users to choose from over 3000 hotels and can find hotels near the user’s current location in real-time.
It is synchronized with the web for easier booking. One would imagine that with more bookings being taken online, less calls are having to be taken during business hours. In comparison, the Accor Hotels Asia Pacific app provides more information and images of over 570 Accor properties in the Asia Pacific region and prides itself on being up-to-date. For customers, this means less disappointment and easier bookings.
In 2010, Accor’s then-deputy senior vice president of sales, Romain Roulleau said in an interview with Business Traveller that Accor Hotels “assume that people with corporate contracts usually are not using iPhone – we’d rather target iPhone for either smaller companies or leisure travellers. We use Blackberry for bigger companies.”
The launch of the Away On Business app by Accor made exclusively for iPad users reflects how quickly Apple has gained favour with those who in previous years would have opted for Blackberry devices. Clearly, there has been more of an effort in recent years to specifically target business travellers and this is reflected in how Accor Hotels uses its YouTube account and the type of apps the brand has made.