Came across the announcement of SPG’s newest strategy to connect with its frequent travelers via social media. The news came out this morning while I was lounging poolside at the W Fort Lauderdale, so apologies for not having this posted sooner. I know many of you blog readers are into this kind of thing.
So SPG has launched a website with the aim of publicizing of all its social media channels. This includes Starwood’s traditional thelobby.com blog, Twitter page, and Facebook fan page. It also includes two nice enhancements related to Twitter and Facebook . . .
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1) There’s the new SPG Insider which is a new map-based travel suggestions database powered by tweets. In other words, you can use a mobile Twitter application to tweet tips on things like restaurants and bars in the city/town you’re visiting. Then SPG does some magic trick and uploads your tweet tip on a shared Google map based on your GPS location. The goal is to create a searchable world map that has a huge list of tips tweeted by SPG members. Will this work? Let’s hope this doesn’t fizzle and die out with the SPG community like it has with some other similar sites. I also did a search for coffee/cafe tips for San Francisco and no results turned up. How can that be!? I guess it’s still in its infancy. See instructions on how to tweet your recommendations on the right, and I included a screenshot of the map output below . . .
2) Then there’s the new SPG TripShare Facebook app that lets you share trip photos directly from your Facebook accounts. You have to have the photos previously uploaded on your profile page. Basically the app lets you choose up to five photos from a trip that’s already posted in a photo album on your Facebook profile. Then you can tag them however you want. The end result is a community of SPG members browsing photos of trips that may or may not be (but most likely will be) Starwood Hotels and destinations. I think this will be the more entertaining of the two new social media functions, but I wonder how inappropriate or irrelevant photos will be weeded out. I just did an upload of a recent trip to Waikiki with my five fave photos. See the second screenshot below . . .
The new SPG Twitter function - GPS based tweets re: travel suggestions
The new SPG TripShare Facebook App - Share your fave five photos!
Here's all of Starwood's social media channels
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