The free tool is available to all hoteliers who wish to monitor and manage what anyone is saying about their property at any time on Facebook, Twitter, and TripAdvisor.

CEO & Co-founder, Morris Sim (pictured left), said, “Since we launched our hospitality business at WIT in 2008, we thought it appropriate and timely to introduce our free tool back at WIT this year. We’re also celebrating our sixth anniversary and this is our way of celebrating with the industry which has so warmly welcomed us since our launch.”

Reflecting Brand Karma’s deep understanding of the hospitality industry, in addition to monitoring brand reputation, Brand Karma Express also enables hoteliers to act on issues that arise from social media via a ‘logbook’ feature. With the tool, hoteliers can assign internal owners to social media issues and track their eventual resolutions. 

A two-minute video explains everything you need to know about how to use Brand Karma Express, and is available atwww.brandkarmax.com

The tool is aimed at independent properties and first-timer hotels that have not been able to afford such services previously.

Said Sim, “We feel that basic social media analysis has become a hygiene tool to manage your hotel’s reputation and everyone should have access to it. Social media has democratized the ability of people to share and we hope this free tool will democratise the ability of every hotel to know what its customers are saying about it and to respond appropriately.

Asked if a free tool could cannibalise its existing business that also includes consultancy, training, and social marketing services, Sim said, “There is always that possibility but we feel the pros outweigh the cons. We offer an optional upgrade path for Express users to Brand Karma Standard, which is our full-service tool to help hoteliers better understand what consumers think of their brand in comparison to their competition and diagnose operations and marketing issues. 

“Whether Express users upgrade or not, the more people who understand the power of sentiment analysis and online reputation management, the better it is for the hotel universe and customers.”

In the last three years, Circos Brand Karma has expanded its business considerably and has quadrupled its staff from 10 to over 40. It now has offices in Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, and the United States.

Its global premium hospitality brand clients include Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, Marriott International, Starwood Hotels and Resorts, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Frasers Hospitality, Auberge Resorts, and Langham Hotel Group. The company remains privately held by a group of angel investors, but is planning on seeking venture capital funding next year to expand.

Said Sim, “More companies are taking social media seriously and we’ve seen an increase in spending in this space, so we want capital to grow our operations and offerings to better support our clients. New job roles like social media managers and digital marketers didn’t exist when we first launched; now most brands have someone in these roles or are recruiting for them. 

“Because consumers are so reliant on social media now, it has gone mainstream, hence having people responsible for it is natural; it’s becoming an integral part of branding. We definitely see an increase next year in staff training because the cornerstone of a successful social media strategy is the ability to manage and create content towards the achievement of business KPIs.

“And by that I don’t just mean posting offers on Facebook pages, but a comprehensive content and engagement strategy across all platforms including broadcast, print, video, local, and interactive on the web and on mobile devices.”

He said he was seeing demand from hotel customers for holistic solutions, from strategy through training and campaign execution.

“We’ve been really fortunate because we invested in learning how to act on social media insights from day one with our first customer, so we’ve had three years of experience in making social media actionable for operations to improve guest satisfaction, and uniquely, for sales and marketing to increase direct business. The social campaigns we’ve run for our clients have steadily increased in size and in numbers, and include everything from increasing brand awareness to improving yield and loyalty. We’re also actively sharing what we’ve learned; every Brand Karma Standard subscriber has a trained Guide that calls them to share insights on a regular basis.”

Brand Karma has also continued to invest in new technology that has made its sentiment tool more sophisticated, including the native analysis of Chinese and Japanese reviews and social media.

“Language is such a reflection of culture, which determines travellers’ perceptions and expectations of a brand. That’s why we’ve invested heavily in understanding a language natively, particularly for Chinese – which we launched after four years of development by some of our smartest engineers. Japanese sentiment analysis is currently in beta with some large Japanese hotel companies that are very pleased with our accuracy. I expect that to release before the end of the year.

“Sentiment analysis of some languages is easier than others; other companies approximate the sentiments by translating a review into English and running an English analyzer on it – but this doesn’t work with Asian languages like Chinese or Japanese.  The accuracy through this method is less than 50%. As Asia is such a growth engine for the world, we felt that it was important to really understand these travellers, which has helped us to not only provide better insights for our clients into what satisfies Asian travellers, but has been absolutely critical in our ability to design business strategy and marketing campaigns for our consulting clients.”

The need for training was what prompted the company to set up Brand Karma University, which includes both free articles and video content on the company’s website, as well as paid-for customized training in digital marketing.

Asked about the most interesting things happening in social media currently, Sim said, “The speed at which it’s become mainstream has been phenomenal.  It’s the largest communication medium in human history, and it’s evolving at a pace that’s never been seen. This is partly fuelled by the fact that over 50% of world’s population is under the age of 30. 

“The other driving factor is the access to computing power via mobile devices and connectivity at lower and lower access fees.  We’re glad that we started our journey in social media early – as frequent flyers, we continue to marvel at its power.  Let’s just say that there’s never a boring day at work, and we’re looking forward to getting Brand Karma Express out to as many hoteliers as possible.”