What’s up everyone! I’m currently traveling in Arizona to visit a friend and it has been quite the adventure. My friend is a medical doctor who lives in a pretty upscale area in Scottsdale called Kierland. He lives in a very nice complex that has a pool, jacuzzi, hot tub, sauna, cold plunge, and other amazing amenities that are free of use for residents. However, he lives in a pretty small 1/1 apartment so staying with him for an entire 4 days was out of the question.
For this reason, I ended up looking for other places to stay. My first option was to check out different hotels on a booking platform like Expedia, Hotels.com, or Chase Travel portal. For me, I ended up using Chase Travel since I have a ton of their credit cards and like to rack up the points when I travel. The second option for me was to check out some AirBnB’s to see if I could get a good deal. After some research, I decided to go with a hotel.
In my opinion, I believe staying at a hotel is just easier and more convenient when traveling solo. Also, the price difference for the type of quality you get is similar. So, after browsing through the Chase Travel portal for awhile, I ended up staying at a Hyatt near where my friend lives.
While doing my research for places to stay, I came across a LOT of different hotel brands. Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton, IHG, and Wyndham just to name a few. Now this got me thinking…what were the differentiating factors that led me to the decision to pick Hyatt over the other brands? Are these brands utilizing social media? What are they doing with it, and have their efforts influenced my decisions at all? I’m going to do a quick comparison of two companies that I looked at the most – Hyatt and Hilton – and talk about the different social media efforts they utilized and if they had any affect on my decision making on whether to stay with them.
Social Media Presence
Both Hyatt and Hilton have a large social media presence. They are active on pretty much all the major social media platforms such as Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. There are a couple of noticeable differences that I observed between the two brands. First, Hilton is not as active on X as Hyatt as they have not posted since 2023. Second, Hilton has a much larger YouTube presence than Hyatt with 1.2M subscribers vs. 47k. All of their other channels have similar followings.
Social Media Content
The type of content posted by Hilton and Hyatt is also very similar. They seem to focus on photos and short videos that tell stories and show breathtaking experiences of different locations throughout the world. They both seem very active in terms of posting and interacting with customers and responding to customer complaints in a timely manner from observing the comments on some of their posts.
There is one post that Hilton made on their Instagram page that I believe is a great strategic move they made to differentiate themselves from their competition in a landscape where it’s tough to standout from the crowd. Their first post showcases their generosity by offering 20,000 free nights for victims that were affected by the recent LA fires. This display of generosity humanizes the company and showcases that they are actively engaged with their social media and not just scheduling posts.
Customer Reviews
While customer reviews aren’t necessarily displayed on social media channels like Facebook, YouTube, X, or Instagram, they are one metric that I personally use to make my decision on whether to invest in a product or service. They could have the most stunning features and affordable prices but if there are thousands of customer reviews that amount to something like a 1.5 out of 5 stars, I will highly unlikely use them. I think this is an important metric because it encompasses a multitude of factors into one rating. Reviews usually cover things such as price, services (cleanliness, friendliness of staff, customer service), reputation, and quality.
Both Hilton and Hyatt fare similarly in terms of customer reviews.
Final Thoughts
Both Hyatt and Hilton have done a fantastic job with their social media presence and content to showcase what they bring to the table when it comes to product, service, and reputation. Personally, did any of these factors influence my decision on which hotel to book for my stay in Arizona? Not really.
For me, I was focused more on location, price, quality, and reviews.
While having a social media presence and strategy is important, when all things are almost equal, having a bit of differentiation just might be the deciding factor whether a customer chooses your brand or not. Personally, I use outsider blogs like this one from NerdWallet to make decisions when there are 2 good options.
Partnering with a popular blog website like this may be a great differentiation strategy that Hilton or Hyatt could add to their social media goals. In the end, I think both companies could maximize their results if they were to get feedback from customers on WHY they chose their brand. Perhaps a survey or questionnaire that could really pinpoint different areas of focus when it comes to customer preferences. This could allow a smarter allocation of resources and time when developing or adjusting a social media strategy.
What do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments!