Hospitality & Tourism

How Meliá became one of the most influential hotel chains on social media

Managing social content on one global platform

With 400+ social media accounts operating at three organizational levels across multiple regions, Meliá faced significant challenges in designing a strategy to centralize content management while enabling each of its groups to communicate successfully with clients and followers. Every brand and hotel with a social media presence has now been streamlined into one platform within Hootsuite, which can be accessed by both regional, hotel teams and Meliá’s global teams. Using Hootsuite’s content library, a central team can now distribute pre-approved content for teams to share at a global or local level, ensuring consistent messaging and branding at all levels. And with the platform’s powerful analytics and reporting features, global departments are able to review and analyze activity across each of the organization’s three levels to guide future strategic decisions. 

With a focus on mobile-friendly visual and interactive content, the company set out to strengthen engagement and increase brand recognition and credibility by humanizing the messaging delivered via its corporate channels. To do this, it launched an innovative initiative centered on the people behind the brand: clients, employees, influencers, and even the company’s CEO.

The company captured images of its products and services taken by clients and used them in email marketing, in digital advertising, or as widgets on its website, allowing users to make reservations with a single click from user-created content.

Another way Meliá has earned greater relevance and authenticity with its specific target audiences is through collaborating with influencers, introducing carefully chosen voices to amplify its brand content. 

This broad global program of influencer marketing has the primary goal of sharing personal experiences. The group manages this via a system for identifying, managing, and analyzing influencer relationships, complete with influencer activity reports that provides Meliá with criteria on which to base its selection of influencers and develop lasting partnerships. 

This approach resulted in 1.7 million interactions and a potential reach of 74.7 million social media users in 2018, based on 40 influencer marketing activations for the Me By Meliá brand.

To complete the social transformation at Meliá Hotels International, the final step was to get staff members engaged and active on social media. Confident that its people are what sets the company apart from the competition, the group set out to design a program that would make staff its strongest allies when it came to conveying its values and building its reputation as an employer brand.

A joint effort between the social media team and the human resources department saw the launch of the employee advocacy initiative, an ambassador program with the primary goal of increasing brand recognition on social media by boosting company content.

With a strong global content strategy managed on a central platform and supported by extensive training and a variety of successful social media programs, Meliá continues to shine as an undisputed and innovative leader in the tourism industry.