Social hotels

Social Hotels
Analysis of the performance of hotels on
social media, and the staycation market in
Singapore
Tesla Insights October 2015

Marina Bay Sands is an integrated resort fronting Marina Bay in Singapore.
Developed by Las Vegas Sands, it is billed as the world's most expensive standalone
casino property at S$8 billion, including the land cost.
Raffles Hotel is a colonial-style luxury hotel in Singapore. It was established by
Armenian hoteliers, the Sarkies Brothers, in 1887. The hotel was named after British
statesman Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore. It is the flagship
property of Raffles Hotels & Resorts, a subsidiary of Fairmont Raffles Hotels
International.
Swissôtel the Stamford, formerly known as the Westin Stamford, is a hotel in
Singapore managed by Swissôtel Hotels & Resorts. Designed by architect I.M. Pei, at
a height of 226 metres (741 ft) it is one of Southeast Asia's tallest hotels. It is part of
the Raffles City complex comprising two hotels, the Raffles City convention centre,
Raffles City shopping centre, and an office tower. Situated at 2 Stamford Road, the
hotel sits above City Hall subway station.

QUESTIONS
1) Among Marina Bay Sands, Raffles Hotel, and Swissotel, which is the most talked about
hotel on social media?
2) What made people talk so much about this hotel?
3) Which part of the year are these social media mentions made?
4) What puts this hotel at an advantage when it comes to social media publicity?

METHODOLOGY
This is an in-depth analysis of conversations and searches about Marina Bay Sands,
Raffles Hotel, and Swissotel, on all social media platforms (excluding mainstream news):
Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Blogs, Media, Forums, in Singapore in English.
We are using the latest social media listening technology, to gather all the conversations
which are scanned by our dedicated analysts in Singapore to verify relevancy to answer our
questions.
Limitation: social networks privacy settings. We are not able to listen to conversations that
people have set as private (eg: What’s App, some private conversations in Facebook).

Among Marina Bay Sands, Raffles Hotel,
and Swissotel, which is the most talked
about hotel on social media?

In the one-year period, Marina Bay Sands has significantly more mentions on Singaporean
social media (Blog, Forum, Micro-Blogging, Video and Photo Sharing, Consumer Opinions,
Comments, Social Network, Hosted Community)

Throughout the year, people talked a lot more about Marina Bay Sands on social media.
Mentions about Marina Bay Sands are especially high in January and September.

What made people talk so much about
this hotel?

The graph above shows what people talk about when they mention Marina Bay Sands. As
expected, the infinity pool is a hot topic of mention.

Posts like the ones shown above are not uncommon. The water surface juxtaposed directly
against the Singaporean skyline creates a favourite spot for people to take photos and
share on social media. When people share these pictures and check themselves in at Marina
Bay Sands, they are generating huge publicity for the hotel on social media.

Which part of the year are these social
media mentions made?

As previously noted, mentions about Marina Bay Sands are especially high in January and
September.
It should also be noted that a huge majority of the January mentions happened on 1
January, especially at midnight.

In January, year 2014 made way for 2015. This gives many people a reason to book resorts
and hotel rooms to provide a setting for cozy celebrations, as well as a place for a short
staycation. However, what made Marina Bay Sands especially mention-worthy on New Year’s
Day? Answer: the proximity to the fireworks. Taking and sharing pictures and videos of
firework displays is a highly widespread practice. When people share these pictures and
videos and check themselves in at Marina Bay Sands, they are generating huge publicity
for the hotel on social media.

In September, the Formula 1 race took place in Singapore. This is a high profile event and, just
like the New Year fireworks, people take and share plenty of photos. Again, social media
publicity was generated for Marina Bay Sands.

What puts this hotel at an advantage when
it comes to social media publicity?

Some businesses boost their publicity through the use of photobooths. These booths are
usually visually interesting and the public will be encouraged to take pictures of themselves at
these booths, and then share the pictures online with check-ins and hashtags – thereby
promoting the businesses to their social networks.
The infinity pool atop Marina Bay Sands serves almost like a photobooth. People take
pictures and selfies there all the time and share them online with the “Marina Bay Sands” brand
often explicitly mentioned. Moreover, people do not have to be encouraged to do that – they
are more than willing to take the photos and mention “Marina Bay Sands”.
This happens for at least two reasons: first, Marina Bay Sands is a brand people are proud
to identify themselves with. The hotel has succeeded in building an image of wealth and
luxury, which people want to associate with. Secondly, the infinity pool with the skyline
backdrop has become something iconic, almost a landmark. People often take and share
pictures of landmarks that their social networks recognize.

Recommendations

If your hotel/business already has an image that people generally want to associate with, that is
great!
Now look for a spot – perhaps a pavilion – that has the potential to become iconic. Dedicate
resources to build the pavilion’s reputation. Try making a meme, encourage photoshoots at
the pavilion, or even try to get movies filmed at the location. Soon people will recognize
your place.
When social networks begin to recognize your pavilion, you may find yourself getting more
mentions like Marina Bay Sands does.

Conquering the Singapore staycation
market

A staycation is a holiday spent in one's home country rather than abroad, or one spent at home
and involving day trips to local attractions. The staycationer market is a segment that can be of
interest to hotel management. Therefore it is useful to know: who are the ones in
Singapore looking and searching for staycations? What are the interests of the target
persona?
First and rather intuitively, affordability is one of the top priorities when Singaporeans are
searching for staycations. So it is pretty safe to assume that: if one wants to market his hotel as
a staycation destination, he almost always have to bring in “promotions” and “deals” along into
the picture. Here are the top queries related to “staycation”, in Singapore:

Top searches for staycation
staycation singapore
staycation in singapore
staycation sentosa
staycation deals
cheap staycation singapore
singapore staycation deals
best staycation singapore
staycation promotion

The following is a more interesting insight. Scrutinizing Singapore web search activities, it is
interesting to note that the people searching for “staycation” are also searching for Chinese
web services like “aliexpress”, “taobao”, “daigou”, and “新源”.
In fact, the time series for the terms “aliexpress”, “taobao”, “daigou”, and “新源” have
correlations of r=0.9774, r=0.9742, r=0.9723, and r=0.9712 with the original “staycation” time
series.

This may ultimately mean that many of those interested in staycations are originally from the
People’s Republic of China (PRC). This hypothesis can be supported by studying the people
searching for the correlated terms like “aliexpress” – they are also searching for things like “cny
to sgd”.
For marketers of hotels in Singapore, it may be worth steering strategies a little to better
appeal to the staycationing PRC market in Singapore.

Thank you !
Let your customers decide your next move.
Go where they express emotions.
Let us help you refine the raw data into gold insights.
About Tesla Insights
We are offering actionable social media insights to help you connect with your customers main concerns, passions
and aspirations, in Asian markets.
Please do get in touch for more custom social media insights for your own needs:
www.teslainsights.com
insights@agencetesla.com

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