Snowstorm tweets pull travellers to Ottawa hotels
By Elizabeth Howell, from: Ottawa Business Journal
February 3, 2011
As a record-breaking snowfall blanketed Ottawa on Wednesday, Denise Breau – flooded with room cancellations at Hotel Indigo – turned to Twitter to drum up business.
"We have rooms available tonight if your travel plans have changed due to the weather," she wrote on Hotel Indigo's Twitter account Wednesday morning, quoting a group-discount code to sweeten the deal.
It's part of a larger, instant-feedback marketing movement for her hotel, she said, which includes constant Twitter updates about restaurant promotions and events in the city, such as the upcoming Winterlude.
"The weather pattern, as it was coming towards Ottawa and the Toronto region and in the U.S., meant we were starting to receive cancellations – people who couldn’t come in to Ottawa," said Ms. Breau, the hotel's sales and marketing director, of the 15-centimetre snowfall that broke a Groundhog Day record.
"We knew, at the same time, that people couldn't get out of Ottawa because of the cancellations. So we had what we would call 'distress inventory' at that point; we had rooms we needed to sell. So we put that out on our Twitter feed."
Similarly, officials at Les Suites Ottawa – watching the snow snarl the afternoon commute through downtown – enticed weary road warriors to pull off the steet and spend the night instead in the hotel.
"Let us be your home away from home tonight if you can't get home tonight in this weather," the hotel stated on Twitter in the late afternoon.
With most of its demographic coming from the social-media friendly 25-to-35-year-old range, general manager George Chaiban said the hotel treats Facebook and Twitter on as important a basis as traditional advertising.
In this case, the hotel did see a pickup in reservations just after the tweet went out, illustrating the pitch worked.
"We're moving away from the traditional way (of advertising) and to a new typical way," he said.
"You won’t believe what Facebook and Twitter will do. Everything is social media. The majority of the new generation is subscribing to these alerts ... so it's a vital outlet for our marketing vehicles."
Sitting in her office just metres from the bus-clogged Transitway, Ottawa Tourism communications director Jantine Van Kregten saw the hotels put out the storm alerts on Twitter. She says she was impressed.
"I'd say that we’re in the early stages right now; not every hotel is on Twitter, but I think it’s exciting," said Ms. Van Kregten, who has used the social-media service herself for two years.
"We see the evolution of that. We see people take real-world, real-time situations, and take advantage in a good way, and leverage sales for themselves from the customer when they want it. You make decisions quickly, and in most cases easily."
She said she has seen other local institutions embrace social media, including the National Capital Commission's introduction of a Winterlude app and, just days ago, a popular Rideau Canal extension that generated 1,000 downloads almost immediately.
But like other campaigns, Ms. Van Kregten urged local institutions to focus on building community above always pushing their products out, as it could turn the audience off rather than engaging them.
"I think people are still feeling it out and finding their niche," she said.
"Some are doing better than others at engaging. It’s easy to have fun on Twitter and find a funny video on YouTube; it has its moments, but it can’t be your sole focus. Neither can pushing out information non-stop about your business."
