HotelChatter

Of the two HotelChatter members who’ve communicated, or tried to communicate, with @Cosmopolitan_LV, neither have been satisfied. The first time, one of us tweeted at them (from our personal account) asking which slot machine was the coolest to try. Radio silence. The second time, another HC person (this one, in fact) found they’d retweeted something nice we said about them. But then, just the day before yesterday, we tweeted at them to ask whether an event they were holding was open to everyone and heard nothing for nearly four hours, by which time it was too late for us to attend the event (plus we have a sneaking suspicion they only got back to us because several people had by that time RTd a complaint we’d made about the Cosmo without directly @ing them – except the RTers had in fact @ed them. Make sense? Complicated, this Twitter land).

Second on the list? @Fourseasons, which we like. Third, @venetianvegas, fourth @RSHotel, fifth @MO_Hotels (download your own copy of the report here or see a rundown of the list here).

We won’t pretend to understand their algorithms, but we’re slightly disturbed by the disclosure that the primary author of the report “worked on the @cosmopolitan_lv social media strategy, planning and measurement programs” and the company that produced it, Seventh Art Media, includes Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental and Trump – all of whom it ranked high – among its clients (thanks to EastCoastGamblr for pointing that one out). But whether or not the study is flawed, it’s fair to say that many of their choices made us – and a few people on Twitter, by the looks of it, go, “Say, whaaaaat?”

Which got us to thinking: what do you look for in a hotel’s Twitter or Facebook account?

Personally, we like one that pushes out special deals, responds quickly to questions or requests, is brave enough to deal with a complaint publicly, rather than on DM. We also like our hotel Twitters to show some personality of their own, a la StanDarde (which ranked at number 10 in the list), and @BryantParkHotel which failed to make the list (and, if we had to name a Facebook page, Mr W from W London Leicester Square who mixes up hotel news and snapshots from their celeb parties with status updates about his dreams. Amaze).

Personally, we don’t dig @Cosmopolitan_LV because it seems to spend most of its time retweeting praise and putting out random stuff like these pictures of flowers from National Geographic. To be fair, it does also pimp out some great competitions - to win ticket to its sold out gigs, for example - but we sometimes miss that in all the random stuff. As a friend of ours said this morning, “They tweet and RT a lot of non-Cosmo or even non-hotel related info. Some of the noise has been interesting if I hadn't already seen it elsewhere but I'm following them for Cosmo-related stuff, not for patterns in nature.”

But then again, we have another friend who is so intrigued by the Cosmo that he loves seeing which flower pattern is inspiring them for the day. So maybe it’s horses for courses.

So, this is where we want you to weigh in. What do you look for in a hotel’s Twitter account? Is it all about the deals? Is a definable personality a bonus or an annoyance? Should hotels make groveling public apologies or stick them on the DM? Most importantly, is tweeting about flower patterns a helpful insight into the mind of a hotel, or a needless clogging of your timeline?

Let us know in comments below!