5 reasons Hotels should use Foursquare

With the surge in popularity of the smart phones, social media sites like FourSquare, which offer ‘Geo location based Checkins’, are ones to watch. Foursquare allow users to ‘check in’ using mobile phones when they visit any location be it a cafe, library, office, shop, hotel etc. They can share their location with friends and win virtual badges for their activity ie: ‘ a mayor badge – for person who visits the location the most’. Find out more about Foursquare here.

The above image shows a hotel, local to our offices and a recommendation I gave; anyone who searched for ‘Hotel Du Vin’, on FourSquare, or who searches for 'Nearby Tips' when in Poole will see this review.

The Guardian wrote an article as a FourSquare user, have a read, as it explains the concept of Foursquare well: "Yesterday I took the tube into central London and walked to a random corner of Soho. I opened the app on my phone and went to the "nearby tips" section....."

Sharing with you, our top 5 reasons why hotel marketers should use FourSquare

1. Provides ability to send out offers and promotions, to local visitors, using FourSquare and interact with your customers Such as:
@ Hotel Max: Come in, show our front desk that you checked in on Foursquare and get a $20 gift card to use towards your next stay and be entered into a raffle to win a free stay!

2. FourSquare can help hotels drive repeat business, as people come back to the same place to become ‘mayor’ (receiving a badge for number of check ins) and retain their position.

3. On search of local places it allows people to find out more about you from others, i.e. This hotel has the best Wi-Fi access in Poole, and allows the hotel owners to learn from peoples comments.

4. Enhances brand regonition via increased awareness within Twitter, as many Twitter users opt to link their Foursquare account with their Twitter account, if you see that one of the people you follow regularly ‘check in’ to a certain Hotel restaurant etc, then you may be interested to find out more.

5. We’ve recently seen the site HotelChatter adding Twitter mentions and Foursquare mentions of hotels to their site under a section called Hotel Social view their story here: They are also beginning to start a list of USA Hotels using FourSquare, we will be watching this list to view how they are using this geo locater social tool.

Want to know more about FourSquare and Social Media Networks, get in touch with the Flashlight team and talk to us further about social media strategies that would suit your business.

Author: Sarah Griffiths