We have had a lot of discussions about the use of facebook to drive sales for hostels. The general opinion seems to be that facebook is a good way to keep in touch with past guests and to drive sales through referrals from those guests.
This article says that hotels are seeing a higher percentage of referrals to their website from facebook than from review sites like tripadvisor.
“Over the course of 2009, we saw the volume of direct referrals from Facebook to hotel websites grow. The conversion rate was higher for Facebook than it was for TripAdvisor and other travel review sites,” said Douglas Quinby, senior director of research for PhoCusWright, a travel research firm in Sherman, Connecticut. The conversion rate on direct referrals from traveler review sites to hotel supplier websites ranged from 4% to 6% in 2009, while conversion from Facebook to hotel websites was 8%.
I see a lot of referrals to my hostel’s website from our facebook page, but I don’t have any hard statistics right now to indicate what percentage of those actually make a confirmed booking.
Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide has provided a booking function within a tab on Facebook for all of its brands and properties since it has been on Facebook.
“Conversion on Facebook is smaller but close to conversion on our brand websites. (Starwood’s Facebook fans) start to see other people’s experiences at the properties,” said David Godsman, VP of global Web for Starwood.
WHAT? They’re getting close to the same number of bookings directly through facebook as they do through their own website? Okay, now they have my attention.
…Westin Hotels & Resorts in January introduced a “Shop” tab on its properties’ Facebook pages. The shopping widget serves as a fully-contained shopping transaction, instead of working as a link from Westin’s website.
I don’t have one of those tabs to make confirmed bookings directly through facebook yet. How many of you have the capability to book your hostel directly through your facebook page? If you do, are you getting a lot of bookings that way?
13 years
I don't think people are ready (at least not yet) to actually buy stuff from FB.
I'm certainly not! I don't even use my real name on facebook, although I'm sure they know it anyway. They have way too much information about me as it is. I don't want to give them my credit card number too. Although if they're tracking all of the websites I visit they may already have it.
13 years
I'm certainly not! I don't even use my real name on facebook, although I'm sure they know it anyway. They have way too much information about me as it is. I don't want to give them my credit card number too. Although if they're tracking all of the websites I visit they may already have it.
I don't use facebook at all - I think the amount of information that is collected is frightening. I am sure that any online shopping and such gives businesses information about me, but I'm not going to divulge things voluntarily. I personally doubt facebook has much interest in me personally - each individual is just a statistic to them - it's more the whole culture of making sure all your "friends", who can number in the thousands, must know what you're doing at all time. I find things like foursquare where you "check in" to locations just weird. I remember travelling before the internet in the USA - the only way I could phone home was via a public phone that I had to insert $9.25 in quarters into. I was out of touch for months, and it was great.
A lot of people I meet travelling use facebook more as a photo album for their travels which people back home can look at - the problem is that it's not really even very good as that. You're far better off with picasa or flickr which are designed for the job and can display much higher res photos and do good slideshows.
13 years
I don't use facebook at all - I think the amount of information that is collected is frightening.
A quick rant on electronic privacy:
It appears that Facebook tracks everywhere people go online. Facebook sets a cookie with their JavaScript widgets, which lets them build a web-history of unauthenticated users based on a unique identifier in the cookie. Then, once you login to Facebook, they have the ability to match that previously anonymous data with your real name.
It probably doesn't matter if you clear your browser's data, because many websites are using trackers called Evercookies and Zombie Cookies that are extremely difficult to delete.
Facebook can identify a large network of your friends based on information they provide about you. Even if you've never signed up for Facebook, they might already know your real name, your e-mail address, a list of people who you have corresponded with by e-mail, and your face.
I think the only reason people haven't really freaked out about Internet privacy is because the average person doesn't know what is possible. "Private browsing" is an illusion, brought to you by the same companies that make it impossible to browse privately (e.g., Google's Chrome browser). :)
This is a good website for following electronic privacy issues:
http://epic.org/
If you don't use Facebook, use Firefox with the NoScript and Better Privacy extensions. Uninstall Microsoft Silverlight, and be sure that Better Privacy deletes LSOs ("Flash cookies") every couple of hours. That isn't a perfect solution, but it will prevent Facebook and Google from setting too many cookies on your computer.
13 years
We at Sirvoy recently released our new Sirvoy Facebok App to allow our clients guests to book through their hostels Facebook pages. We had some really good feedback from it! It's a free add on to all our clients.
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