Want a cheaper holiday? Expand your social media circle
Oliver Smith Oct 5 2014 at 11:51 PM
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A new travel website is promising guests discounts on hotel rooms depending on how large their social media following is.
Visitors to the website Hotelied are invited to provide it with access to up to five of their social networking accounts Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin and Instagram.
They can then search for hotel rooms in five destinations (New York, Los Angles, Miami, Portland and Tel Aviv) and are presented with a variety of options, with discounts that supposedly correspond with their social media clout.
The idea is that those with a large number of friends and followers "tastemakers" is how Hotelied describes them are more likely to provide free publicity for the hotels and encourage others to stay.
The website explains: "Based on its specific business needs, a hotel may be targeting small groups, guests who work in specific industries such as fashion, entertainment, business, or education, frequent travellers, loyal travellers, and more. In addition, a hotel may want to increase their social media interaction with guests, thus searching for guests with high social influence and a strong digital following."
I searched for a hotel room in New York for a two-night stay from November 21, and with a reasonable number of Twitter followers (1,800 or so), I was offered a discount of 20 per cent at the Dream Downtown hotel ($US276 ($AU318) a night, instead of $345 ($AU397)). The discount would seem to be valid when I approached the hotel directly, the cheapest available rate for the same period was indeed $US345 a night.
My social media following earned me discounts of up to 40 per cent on other hotels, such as the Metropolitan by COMO in Miami. The maximum discount available to all users is 50 per cent.
Members of six hotel loyalty programmes (Accor, Hyatt, Hilton, IHG, Marriott and Starwood) and four airline reward schemes (BA, TrueBlue, Lufthansa and Virgin) are also invited to link those accounts to Hotelied, to further boost their profile.
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Want a cheaper holiday? Expand your social media circle