Real world fame usually carries over to the world of social media.
Celebrities don’t get millions of followers based on brilliant content they get them because they are famous.
Does the same thing happen in the hospitality industry? Are the biggest, most popular brands the most successful on social media.
We decided to find out.
We started by comparing the top ten largest hotel brands in the world, with the most popular twitter accounts in the hospitality industry.
For only included Twitter for the sake of simplicity.
Here are the top 10 largest hotel brands (by number of properties) via hospitalitynet
- Intercontinental Hotel Group
- Hilton Hotels
- Marriot International
- Wyndham Hotel Group
- Choice
- Accor
- Starwood Hotels and Resorts
- Best Western
- Home Inns
- Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group
Twitter top ten list (by number of followers)
- Wynn Las Vegas
- The Cosmopolitan
- Marriot International
- MGM Grand Hotel
- ARIA Las Vegas
- Hotel Bl
- Hilton Hotels
- Caesars Palace
- Luxor Hotel & Casino
- Mandalay Bay Resort
Size didn’t matter, but location did.
Surprisingly, The list of top ten Twitter accounts wasn’t populated by large brands.
Yes, the giants Marriot and Hilton made the list but ranked #3 and #7 respectively.
What’s more surprising are the hotels that did make the list!
Six of the ten most popular twitter accounts are Las Vegas hotels/casinos (in bold).
Not brands, not hotel groups but individual properties.
Hilton had 3,992 hotels as of 2013, yet five hotels in Las Vegas each separately had more Twitter followers than them. Marriot fared slightly better in the rankings but still couldn’t break into the top two.
Is there something about gambling that compels guests to follow their favorite casino and hotel on Twitter? What’s really going on?
Looking at a basic account comparison for the Wynn Las Vegas and Marriot doesn’t reveal much, in fact by most measures Marriot should have more followers. Marriot has tweeted more, has an older account and follows more people… they should have more followers.
| Followers | Following | Tweets | Date Joined | |
| @WynnLasVegas | 536,000 | 8,684 | 10,800 | Aug 2009 |
| @MarriottIntl | 308,000 | 15,900 | 17,600 | March 2008 |
After some more digging we discovered that weren’t the only ones to identify the Twitter / Las Vegas connection. The Wynn Las Vegas made a splash in 2010 when they acquired over 300,000 followers in just six months!
Simply a matter of being endorsed by Twitter?
Hotelmarketingstrategies.com accounted for the Wynn’s success by noting that it was placed on Twitter’s “suggested users list” which had a huge impact on their popularity.
Aha! So what is this magic list and how do you get on it?
Being on Twitter’s suggested user list provides a huge boost to any account listed because it’s shown to every person who creates a new account.
According to a 2009 New York Times article the criteria for becoming a “suggested user” isn’t exactly scientific. Apparently a team of twitter employees puts together the list based on “ fast growing accounts.” as well as additional subjective measures.
According to Twitter, some of the criteria used to list accounts includes: “is the account a good introduction to Twittering for a new user?” “Does the person or organization running the account have fairly wide or mainstream appeal?”
What about the other Vegas hotels?
So being on the suggested user list probably had a lot to do with the Wynn’s success. But what about the other Vegas hotels? Did Twitter feature all of them?
It seems unlikely that Twitter would choose to put 6 different Las Vegas hotels all on their “suggested user list”. We have a different idea.
Our Theory : AKA how to Wynn at Twitter
In 2012 Twitter replaced the “Suggested user list” with a customized list that would suggest accounts for people to follow based on their Twitter activity including who they were already following.
Twitter’s customized lists probably suggested other Vegas hotels to users based on the fact that they were already following the Wynn.
The Wynn’s success artificially inflated the popularity of other hotels nearby.
We admit there’s no way to prove this theory, but it makes a lot of sense to us. At least more sense than the idea that Las Vegas hotels are just social media geniuses. (No offense Las Vegas hotels’ social media managers.)
What does this mean for other hotels on Twitter?
The good news is you don’t need to be a giant multinational brand to be successful on Twitter . The incredibly ironic bad news ,since we’re talking about Vegas, is that you need to be pretty lucky to replicate the success of the Wynn.
It’s important to keep in mind that although being directly endorsed by Twitter is what got the Wynn Las Vegas to the top, they needed to be a great account to get Twitter’s attention in the first place.
The Wynn responds to pretty much all tweets directed at them, they constantly post useful information for guests and overall have a good content mix. That holds true for most of the other accounts on the list as well.
In the end, content is still king. Put yourself in the best possible position to capitalize on an opportunity like the Vegas Hotels experience by being a Twitter account people want to follow!
We’d love to hear your theories on why Las Vegas hotel’s are dominating the hospitality industry on Twitter. Please leave us a comment below!
