A new study by Meltwater, which provides insights and consultancy to help brands future-proof their business, examines how digital disruption is redefining the customer’s travel experience across the hospitality industry in Asia.
Adopting a digital-first strategy could give hospitality companes a “first mover advantage” and help them better connect with customers at a personal level, citing Airbnb as an example.
The findings reveal Airbnb has the largest share of voice (SOV) on both news and social media channels, when compared to various other hotels including some legacy brands that have been in operation for much longer. (SOV is the volume of the brand’s mentions divided by the industry mentions).
Airbnb has “first mover advantage” to stay ahead of its competitors
Meltwater uncovers the data by tracking the total mentions of brands online, including the Asean’s top five hotels, sharing economies such as Airbnb and Homeaway and Online Travel Agents (OTAs) including Expedia and Agoda.
“According to our research Airbnb, the pioneer of the sharing economy, has stayed ahead of its competitors with its first mover advantage in Asia, led by a focus on digital strategy and localised content. This has brought increased engagement from customers, which has corresponded to its position as the market leader,” said Mimrah Mahmood, regional director, media solutions of Meltwater Asia Pacific.
“The hospitality industry has seen significant transformation in recent years. Brands that are navigating this disruption need to understand technology has redefined the customer experience.”
Here are the other key findings in Asia:
- Hotel industry: Sheraton dominated SOV in news (32%) and social (28%) of earned media, with Shangri-La (27%) and Marina Bay Sands (27%) coming in second and third respectively for news channels, and third (24%) and second (27%) respectively for social channels. Marina Bay Sands tops both news and social for positive sentiment, followed by W Hotels and Ritz-Carlton. Although both Shangri-La and Sheraton had the highest SOV in news and social media among the hotels analysed, both brands have a lower percentage of positive mentions, with a bulk of the sentiment being neutral.
- Sharing economy: Airbnb has the largest news (12,637) and social media (68,056) volume on earned media, making the brand the undisputed market leader for the sharing economy in Asean 6, as well as globally.
- OTAs: Agoda dominates the social media sphere, capturing just over 60% of the share of voice, followed by TripAdvisor at 30.46%. On Twitter, TripAdvisor has the largest share of followers (89.57%) while Expedia has a larger share of the interactions (51%). TripAdvisor is the King of Instagram among the OTAs, having 15 and 33 times more interactions as compared to Expedia and Agoda respectively.
Read the full PDF report: Meltwater Report – Digital Disruption of the Hospitality Industry
• Featured image credit: scyther5/iStock
