WASHINGTON, D.C.—Encouraging guests to speak positively about a hotel might be considered best practice, but it just as easily can become a minefield if marketers run afoul of U.S. Federal Trade Commission regulations.
The difference often lies in disclosure, panelists explained during “Digital marketing & social media: Risks & rewards,” conducted 13 November during the Hotel & Lodging Legal Summit, co-sponsored by the American Hotel & Lodging Association and the Georgetown University Law Center.
Under FTC guidelines, which were last updated in 2009, companies must disclose when they’ve compensated any blogger, tweeter or social media user in exchange for publicity. Failure to do so could result in fines and possible government monitoring for compliance.
Some unsavory tactics are clearly in direct violation of FTC guidelines, such as “astroturfing” (a name derived from the artificial grass) whereby a sponsor’s message is masked to seem as if it was spontaneous or from grass roots participants. Padding online reviews is one hotel-specific incarnation, according to Matt Peters, co-founder and creative director of Pandemic Labs, a social media marketing agency.
Not every violation is as clear in the hazy social media landscape, panelists said.
If a company offers a freebie on the back of a coupon and asks that “you find us on Facebook,” it’s considered acceptable, said Brian Heidelberger, chair of the advertising, marketing and privacy law practice at Winston & Strawn. But if hoteliers ask guests to like their properties in exchange for entrance into a sweepstakes, that is a no-no, he said.
Another grey area, posited by Ama Romaine, VP and senior counsel, brands, Hilton Worldwide Holdings: Hoteliers offer guests something of value (e.g. a free night’s stay) to recover from a bad experience, and those guests then post reviews on TripAdvisor. The FTC doesn’t address this specific scenario.
And murkier still, borne of what Romaine called the “more innocuous blurring of personal with social (media)”: The company has hired marketing people who might talk about brands on their personal social media pages.
In the case of the latter, marketers must be kept abreast of policies and guidelines and then monitored at all times. “If we see someone talk about the brand, and they are paid by us, we make sure the connection is disclosed,” Romaine said. “But better yet, they shouldn’t do it on a personal page.”
Hoteliers must set practical rules on what is an approved practice, she explained, acknowledging it’s impossible to check every “single comment, every single issue.”
Peters said rules on acceptable practices must be updated frequently—at least quarterly.
To avoid running afoul of the FTC guidelines, Heidelberger suggested:
- If a company “sponsors a message and pays a person for it directly or with a freebie,” the FTC wants it to be an “honest and truthful opinion” versus the person saying it because he got paid;
- there must be an “appropriate disclosure of the relationship”;
- messages on social media should be monitored and taken down if no disclosure has been made; and
- have a policy in place. While not a cure-all for every violation, the FTC expects corporations to take certain precautions, including educating staff of acceptable practices on social media.
Padding reviews
The padding of reviews was one topic in particular that drew that panelists’ attention.
“All our brands are honest and truthful,” Heidelberger said, but there are some minefields.
One such example comes during a hotel’s opening or ramp-up phase, when stress can run rampant. If the numbers of reviews are low, hoteliers should resist the temptation to utilize “side tactics to pad them to make them look better,” Peters said, adding this message should be made clear to any third-party marketing or ad agencies.
“In their more sober moments, (ad) agencies and their partners may not dream of jumping onto TripAdvisor and quickly writing 10 5-star reviews for the brand new property,” he said.
But when a ramp-up starts to sputter, or when marketing dollars start to run dry, the free (and inauthentic) publicity offered by fake reviews on various user-generated sites might become more tempting, Peters warned.
The itch to pad reviews is not limited to ramping up, he added.
For example, a hotelier might justify the practice by saying, “‘Everyone knows that people like our hotel, but we don’t have enough reviews, so let’s make some reviews. These are things people are saying about our brand anyway,’” Peters said.
To quell such urges, hoteliers need think only of the fines and prolonged monitoring waiting on the other side of the FTC hammer, Heidelberger said.
“No one wants the government looking over its shoulder,” he added.