The following post is from McLean Robbins, Copywriting Manager.
Pinterest is the world’s fastest-growing social media site, with more than 21 million unique visitors in 
July 2012 alone. The image-sharing site has fast become a critical part of marketing for the travel industry, allowing for properties and travel brands alike to share images that further the wanderlust of guests and future guests alike.
Use these board suggestions as a jumping-off point from which to formulate your page or to enhance an existing online presence:
Food & Beverage
Food, particularly recipes, are a core component of Pinterest’s user base. Showcase your own food and beverage options. If you can, link these images to your blog or website, where you can share select recipes with guests.
Weddings & Events
Weddings also form a large part of the Pinterest user base. Showcase real weddings at the property, your event spaces, your presidential suite or “bridal suite” to show brides, event-planners, and wedding enthusiasts all about having a wedding at your property. If you are a smaller property with wedding planners onsite, you can even offer up “mood boards” for different types of weddings at the property – modern, classic, intimate and grand – showcasing various locations.
Our Property
The words “pretty” and “Pinterest” go hand-in-hand – showcase your property’s glamour shots, both interior and exterior. If you have extensive on-property photography, you can break this out into multiple boards for interior and exterior images.
Our Area
Encourage re-pins and re-pin yourself from local businesses and their own Pinterest pages by sharing ideas of what to do in the local area – from restaurants to sports teams to museums.
Our Brand / Places We Wish To Visit
If your property is part of a larger brand, highlight sister properties. If your property is independent, create a board to fuel your own “wanderlust” – and share the story of which staffer wants to visit the location to add a personal touch.
Don’t forget, adding your property name and a linked URL (where applicable) into the description, along with relevant hashtag keywords, is key to making sure your content is best preserved when being shared.
If possible, utilize images that already exist on your website or blog, instead of uploading directly from a desktop, so as best to drive traffic back to your property’s website or social media sites.
If your property is mentioned by a user, comment, like or repin the image to encourage social interaction. Find places your property has been mention or places your URL has been shared by using the convention http://pinterest.com/source/domainname.com/. All you will need to do is replace “domainname” with the website’s name.
Interested in ramping up your online strategy? Check out the full suite of MICROS eCommerce interactive marketing tools, send us an email, or give us a call +1 301.841.4700(US) | +44 (0)20 3004 9468(UK).
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
it’s certainly not a ‘critical part of hotel marketing’ in the UK, don’t know where you got this idea from, in fact I’d say there are very few UK hotels using it in their marketing strategy.
Is this just another piece of social media hype I wonder?
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