April 15- Hotels in the Middle East are getting more and more comfortable with the idea of using social networking sites to promote their business. Previously, hotels in the region were reluctant to jump on the social networking bandwagon. “Social networking sites are still in their relative infancy and we don’t know how they are going to grow up. What we do know is that social networking is generating a large amount of buzz in hospitality marketing,” said Ray Tinston, sales Director of The Hotel Show Middle East.
Quoting the results of a survey, he said that the number of Twitter users in the Middle East and North Africa have increased from 3,000 to around 40,000 in the last 12 months. Already, the four IHG properties in Dubai Festival City (DFC), are on Twitter. Since then, they have already attracted a combined following of over 10,000 tweeters.
Meanwhile, Facebook is still the platform of choice for hotels. Abu Dhabi Starwood’s Aloft has a Facebook page with 7,000 fans since the page was set up. It remains to be seen how the rest of the hotels in the region use social networking to their advantage.
