Case Study: Gran Meliá Hotels International

Meliá Hotels International is a Spanish leading hotel company and one of the largest hotel companies in the world, with more than 350 hotels, divided into seven famous brands, in 35 countries. Their hotels are designed to offer everything from the most exclusive luxury (such as Gran Meliá Hotels & Resorts, ME by Meliá and Paradisus Resorts), to upscale services (for instance Meliá Hotels & Resorts, and Innside by Meliá), through to more middle scale hotels (such as Tryp by Wyndham, and Sol Hotels & resorts).

My analysis of the social marketing tactics would focus on Gran Meliá Hotels & Resorts. Gran Meliá are the finest hotels within the Meliá Hotels International portfolio, designed as an exclusive series of hotels and resorts focus on travellers

Finally, Gran Meliá through social media attempts to engage customers into some contests, for example, in the summer campaign of this year, participants had to share photos of their stay (by including #GreatSummerStories) and the winners were rewarded with a free stay in one of their hotels. Moreover, Gran Meliá encourage their guest through social media to participate in their loyalty program (Meliá Rewards), in which you can gather points for your stays and acquire other rewards.

The goal of Gran Meliá with these messages is to provide more information of the hotel to their guests, and therefore differentiating from the competition by highlighting the attributes of their brand. Also, to further define and develop the concept of their brand that otherwise would have been difficult and costly to communicate (for example with their “red level” concept). Additionally, their goal is to communicate major events, activities or experiences guest can engage in, and hence enhancing their experience during their stay, and attracting future customers that might be interested or involve in these events or activities. Another goal is to have a closer and deeper relationship with their guests and therefore understand better their wants and interest, hence

I believed it was a great idea because it was appealing for the guests, and helps Gran Meliá to realise the strong aspects of their hotels or at least what guest like about them (some of these posts are included in the Appendix).

As a social media manager of Gran Meliá I would maintain the practise of posting information on activities, attractions, dining, shopping, and nightlife. As well as prizes for uploading pictures of the hotel and sharing experiences. However, I would encourage the latter one more after this summer success (many people participated). Furthermore, I would also suggest Gran Meliá to use “Panoramia”, which is great site to have guests posts photos since it linked them to Google Earth & Maps. Finally, I would recommend to integrate their Facebook and Twitter page further, since in Facebook and other social networks they share some great videos that they are not available in Twitter.

In conclusion, the marketing tactics of Gran Meliá are customer oriented, very appealing, well integrated (in general), with special care in creating a general brand