Why Holiday Rental Owners Should Take Tips From Fashion

It’s not normally a world in which a hotel or rental owner would look for advice (except perhaps in terms of interior decor) but the fashion business is a leader in using social media to engage and excite their customers. As an industry that actively chases the ‘new’ it isn’t surprising that fashion bloggers and new social platforms are snapped up by those always looking for ways to either find out what’s up and coming or create it themselves.

A blog by EConsultancy particularly talked about ASOS and Topshop as constantly looking for new ways to stay on top of trends and the way people interact with them. ASOS for example have a particular Twitter account just for customer queries (@ASOS_heretohelp) – this is clever and syphons off dull or possibly critical tweets about their brand keeping their main Twitter feed vibrant, positive and complaint-free. It’s good for them and for customers (who don’t want mundane tweets or posts asking where their shoes are). This might not be necessary for a small business but is a clever way of ‘channelling’ any potential issues and limiting the chances of negative chat on other channels. Also, think about the reason people follow or ‘like’ you. For a brand like ASOS they will want to know about the latest trends or offers – not day to day ‘issues’.

For a holiday property or hotel they want to hear about news from the place they had a lovely holiday (or would like to have one), they want to see gorgeous pictures that remind them of the time they had there or beautiful shots of a trip that one day they would love to take. Try and keep your day to day niggles out of a place that holds particular memories or dreams for that person. Endless posts about availability may just chip away at their dream and put doubts in their mind as to whether it is really a place they want to visit – make those things an event showing that it is rare!

Another way to re-enforce this is on Pinterest. Again, fashion brands use Pinterest in a whole variety of ways; Anthropologie uses it to show pictures of their amazing window displays all over the world – over 93,000 people comment on the board and share it. Luxury brand Calypso St Barth gave pinning power to the fourth most followed pinner and flew her out to St Barth to live pin their fashion shoot. Ted Baker use Instagram to transform snaps of customers into drawings by fashion illustrators. There are many more examples like this, but you can see that the possibilities are endless. House owners like Phoebe Thomas are using Pinterest actively to really give guests a feel for her holiday home in the South of France and for her own personal style and loves – very engaging and reaches a whole new audience (there are 13 million of them). Infact hotels and resorts are ideal for platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram where the ‘look’ and ‘feel’ is very important. It’s all about feeding the dream and finding new and innovative ways to do it!

If you’d like to get your business onto more social platforms then Rental Tonic are really happy to help you do that. Just comment below or go to our Contact Us page.