Skift Take
Hotels are using social media to improve their branding and customer service. Although this may be the world's first "Instagram hotel," more hotels are reworking their design to make it easy for guests to share experiences online.
The world’s first self-acclaimed Instagram hotel is designed around the photo-sharing app. But it is also beautifully designed with free Wi-Fi and an iPad in every room.
The 1888 Hotel in Sydney, Australia, prompts guests to take “selfies” before checking in, gives a free stay to travelers with more than 10,000 followers, and allows customers to display a stream of their own Instagram posts in their room.
The hotel also provides guests with an “Insta-Walk” map that shows them the best nearby spots to snap Instagram-worthy photos.
“People are taking images wherever they go and sharing them with their friends, so we thought we’d play on that a little bit with things like the ‘selfie space’ and the monthly competitions,” Paul Fischmann, CEO of 8 Hotels, told CNN in September.
1888 reopened as a boutique hotel in spring 2013 after a two-year $28 million renovation.
Designing the hotel based off the popular app has generated a lot of buzz. And rather than a short-lived social media campaign that most hotel properties do today, 1888’s design and concept means that as long as there are guests, there will be uploads of the hotel with its own hashtag #1888Hotel. This is crowdsourced marketing at its best.
Guests give the hotel social lift and send out a constant stream of property photos. The hotel’s modern and funky design helps it get onto guests’ social streams.
The hotel itself shares news and gives customers an inside look at operations via Instagram:
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Tags: australia, instagram, marketing, social media
Photo credit: 1888 Hotel's own Instagram account on an iPad. PlaceIt by Breezi