Paris hotel generates 10% of sales through Facebook
A Paris hotel is predicting it will get more than 10% of its sales through Facebook this year.
The Hôtel Relais Bosquet, an early pioneer of online sales via Facebook, says it earned €14,000 and €13,000 of sales through its Facebook page in the last few months of 2011, and said the figure continues to grow.
The hotel has installed an Availpro booking engine and has been offering its Facebook ‘fans’ exclusive special offers with preferential rates and free breakfasts.
Fans are also able to cancel their booking up to 3pm on the day before check-in at no cost.
According to Availpro, other hotels have followed suit with similar offers and some have gone a step further by advertising the special Facebook-only offers on their website homepage with a link to their Facebook page.
Availpro technical director Antoine Buhl said: "We are always looking for ways to exploit the possibilities that Facebook offers, including sharing booking information on users’ walls and mentioning special Facebook rates on the hotel’s online booking engine.
"We follow very closely changes from Facebook itself such as the recent release of the Timeline version of Facebook in order to adapt our Facebook solution. We are also putting the finishing touches to our Facebook booking engine for hotel groups and chains to meet increasing demand in this area."
by Bev Fearis
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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