Hotel Terravina were active in all elements of on-line marketing, but felt that their approach was too ‘scatter gun’ and required much more focus. The main areas of improvement were around social media and customer engagement and relationship management – the business made sure that all activity fed back to the website and that there was consistency and relevance about each of their messages: ‘social media provides us with more brand presence and means that people don't forget about us!’

1. DIGITAL DESTINATIONS
Dr Philip Alford
Bournemouth University
www.digitalhub.co.uk
www.pinterest.com/digitaldest
www.slideshare.net/DigitalHub
ddp@bournemouth.ac.uk
@schooloftourism | @philipalford
#DDBU

2. Digital Destinations project is an ESRC funded research project,
delivered by Bournemouth University,
with an overarching aim to:
‘capture change in the adoption and use of digital technologies
and to develop a strong, competitive local tourism economy.
Through increased understanding and use of emerging digital
technologies, visitor economy businesses will be in a position to
increase their marketing and management effectiveness, and
develop new products and services that will provide an
enhanced experience for visitors to their destinations’

3. The businesses benefited from 4 workshops which covered:
 Background to on line marketing
 Individual Business objectives
 Developing the strategy
 Measuring impact
 Reporting outcomes via case studies
All course material can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/DigitalHub
All business outcomes and blogs can be found at http://www.budigitalhub.co.uk/

4. The following presentation is the case study provided by Hotel Terravina
Hotel Terravina were active in all elements of on-line marketing, but felt that their
approach was too ‘scatter gun’ and required much more focus. The main areas of
improvement were around social media and customer engagement and relationship
management – the business made sure that all activity fed back to the website and
that there was consistency and relevance about each of their messages: ‘social media
provides us with more brand presence and means that people don't forget about us!’

5. Hotel TerraVina
Nina Basset

6. Where we were at the start of the project
A ‘hit and miss online marketing strategy
Re-active rather than pro-active.
All sorts of “scatter” marketing.
Social media plan in place, lacking direction and regular updating.
A Facebook business page

7. Could do Better!
A Twitter page
A weekly blog
Direct E-mail
LinkedIn page
Regular newsletters and E-shots and YouTube videos
No clear strategy. Our “school report” said…… “Could do
better!”

8. Findings then…..
 80% of Hotel TerraVina’s business was from returning customers
 Most of them aged 25+, primarily 40+ years of age.
 The hotel’s Unique Selling Point (USP) is wine, which is clearly communicated on the
website.
 As a hotel we interact well with our regular returning guests, but not as well as we
could in gaining new guests.
 We wanted to understand more about the benefits of using Facebook effectively, and
having a strategy that is more focused.
 Use of SEO was good
 At top of Google for searches

9. Findings then……
 Excellent customer loyalty
 E shots in use
 Information gathered for the data base

10. Some Stats…..
 Data from Google web analytics for four months:
 August 1st to November 1st, 2012 (start)
 New data from November 2nd to March 2nd, 2013 (end)
 01/08/12-01/11/12 02/11/12-02/03/13
 New Visitors
 70.18% 69.54%
 Returning Visitors
 29.82% 30.46%
 Bounce Rate
 35.15% 38.07%

11. Data
 Unique Visitors
 29,423 34,192
 Visits
 38,726 45,533
 Page views
 150,433 173,382
 % New Visits
 70.12% 69.48%
 Average visit duration
 00:02:19 00:02:25


12. Report info
 Report one, gives you progress over an entire year - so what we gained during the year in terms of
followers, messages and so on in total.
(hand out)
The two other reports run from 1st Feb 2012 to 31st May 2012 (2nd report) and compare against 1st Feb
2013 to 31st May 2013. (3rd report)
(hand outs)
 Amount of messages and updates increased year on year
 We gained more followers and had a lot more activity (retweets) etc. when you compare the two.
In fact, on Twitter, additional followers are in the hundreds, which hopefully shows what
kind of levels of interaction and 'brand awareness' we're achieving.
In social media terms, I (Nina) have become an author – book published in 2012, (a selection
of Blogs from the Hotel blog posts) within the social media landscape and also a 'voice'.
 People now follow because they feel we have more presence and carry more weight than
they do. Thus by being part of our social network they feel they benefit.
Obviously we benefit from them because they retweet our content which means a
much larger reach of people.

13. Interesting facts
 We're reaching 3k people at times and we're getting reasonable click throughs as well - all
going to the website...
 Note a recent Sommelier blog post reached a staggering 10'000 people!
 Generally we get between 25 and about 70 click throughs on tweets, which over a month
probably sees something like 700 additional website visits.
It begs the question - would these people look at our site so much without Twitter? We'd
undoubtedly get hits as we've got a strong site, but if people forget they're unlikely to look,
so I'd argue that our social media provides us with more brand presence and means that
people don't forget about us!
Malmsey's blog.
 We used our current standing with HT socially to launch the 2nd blog.
 We average up to 1000 unique visits a month, sometimes 700.
 Hotel TerraVina's website brings in a lot of traffic, but so does Facebook and Twitter.

14. Where we are now
 More focused, strategic and better organized.
 Using the website to promote special offers
 Tweeting offers, adding them to the hotel’s FB page
 Encouraging followers to re-tweet and like our pages.
 We are more pro-active about social media (TV opportunities are followed up and
actioned)
 A 2nd blog created, about Nina’s puppy, Malmsey.

15. Where we are now
 Buzz words for the future…
 Focus
 Strategy
 Plan

16. Present and Future
 Improved the hotel profile on Linkedin
 Attracting more attention from Groups and corporate individuals
 More pro- active on Twitter
 Gained many more followers, some of whom are slightly younger than our current
guest data base
 Introduced cards for people to fill in their e mail addresses when dining with
 Growing the data base with regular visitors to the hotel

17. Present and Future
 Targeted invitations for reviews to more hip and trendy magazines and on line
publications, such as 6/10 to attract a younger City set
We are getting there and along the way we have gained a number of new business
colleagues and friends who have made the course fun, friendly and a pleasure to
learn. We are all keen to stay in touch and so a great support network of APPSFAB
has been created

18. Moving Forward
 Now our school report reads…… Made positive changes, still more to make,
continue the good work and well done!
 Yay! We aren’t Social Media Newbies anymore!!!!

19. The End
Find us on:
 Twitter @TerravinaHotel
 Facebook - Like us please!
 Website: www.hotelterravina.co.uk
 Hotel Blog: http://www.hotelterravina.co.uk/blog/
 Malmsey’s Blog: http://caninetailsofmarmitemalmsey.co.uk/
 Or simply call us the old fashioned way on: 02380 293 784

20. For more information on DIGITAL DESTINATIONS contact:
Dr Philip Alford, Bournemouth University
ddp@bournemouth.ac.uk
@schooloftourism | @philipalford
#DDBU