How Four Seasons Hotels Use Twitter

Four Seasons Hotel has showed that businesses should use twitter. I love to follow stories on how companies are integrating twitter or social media in their businesses. I wanted to cover this story earlier but @dannybrown did an amazing job covering this story in his blog post Four Seasons Hotel and the Art of Social Media. So I am going to concentrate more on how four seasons hotel is using twitter in their marketing.

@BrianSolis talks about this in his book Engage. When you open his book he has a big funky font saying

This quote fits well with Four Seasons Hotel and their main twitter account at @FourSeasons and 50 other localized account because they listen on twitter. Most probably they will be reading this blog post as they keep an eye on their keywords so that they know what people are talking about their brand and they can communicate back.

How Four Seasons Hotel Is Using Twitter

1. Main Account and Localized Account

As you notice @fourseasons have a main account and then separated with their localized account. The reason behind this is because all the hotels are different or has its own unique property and they use the localized accounts to be more personal to their customers and concentrate on promoting more using their main account.

With the localized twitter account it is not so messy compare to using one twitter account and sending tons of tweets with that account.

2. Spying

@fourseasons are actually spying on keywords or what people are talking about their brand. Whether it is good or bad.

Facts: When someone is happy about something they tell 3 people

When someone in unhappy about something they tell 10 people

@loic mention this before that he prefer if someone is talking bad about his brand than not talking about his brand at all.

@Fourseasons are actually tracking tons of different keywords. They even took action when a customer complained on twitter about something.

3. Engage

Yes! they reply to most of the questions or inquiries people send to them using their localized twitter account or main account depending on the question or tweet.

Here is a testimonial from one of their customers

I think every companies should reply their customers when they can. They can use cotweet to reply their customers quickly.

4. Promotion

Like all businesses, it is never going to complete without the promotions. What @fourseasons tweet are promotions of their

• Chef/Restaurant
• Bar
• Spa

They also do a lot of testing to see what works and what doesn’t.

5 Welcome Customers

This is why @fourseasons have 50 localized twitter account. They use them to welcome their customers who send a tweet to that account. Below is an example.

6. Events

@FourSeasons also tweet about events such as their upcoming Fund Raising.

Saturday, June 12 is the Four Seasons Hotel Boston Run of Hope in Partnership with the David Ortiz Children’s Fund. A run-walk to benefit pediatric cancer care and research at the Massachusetts General Hospital for Children and the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. <more info>

Besides this they also have tweetups. Which is a great idea because it builds relationship.

How Four Seasons Hotel Can Improve?

Well they don’t really need to improve much because they are doing very well but here are my suggestions.

1. Welcome their customers more.

I used to follow their twitter account a lot because I was “spying” on what they were doing. @FourSeasons localized accounts used to welcome their customers who tweet that they were at a particular Four Seasons Hotel or that they just reached.

With foursquare people are checking in and some of them automatically post a tweet to twitter. I think that @fourseasons should welcome their customers more. Moreover those who checks in to @fourseasons usually have a twitter account.

2. Have localized twitter account printed welcome cards in rooms or brochures

I don’t think all customers will know about four seasons twitter account. So by printing them on the hotel cards to welcome customers when they reach their rooms or brochures, customers can tweet if they are happy or unhappy about their services straight to them.

3. Twitter Promotion

I think @fourseasons should have their own twitter promotion for those who are following them on twitter. It makes their followers feel good or appreciated (and get more followers at the same time)

4. Don’t protect tweets

I am not sure why they protect some of their account tweets but I am sure there is a reason to it… or not..

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