Why Social Media Belongs in Hospitality’s Leadership Thinking

Social media has become an increasingly powerful force in how travellers discover, evaluate and ultimately choose hotels. Yet despite its growing influence on booking decisions, its commercial value often remains difficult to measure and falls somewhere between marketing, revenue management and hotel operations. I recently had the opportunity to discuss this challenge with Alisa Kremer, founder of KORDIE and the Hospitality Social Media Summit (HoSS). Our conversation focused on why social media deserves greater attention at the executive level and what general managers, hotel owners and boards should be asking, understanding and investing in as they prepare for 2027.

At a time when artificial intelligence dominates so much of the conversation around hospitality's future, it was a good moment to reconnect with Alisa and explore an area that is already shaping traveller behaviour every day. Naturally, AI was part of our discussion too, particularly how it is transforming social media strategies, content creation and the way hotels engage with potential guests. Above all, our conversation highlighted the need to position social media within the broader commercial picture, while raising awareness among senior leadership and key stakeholders of its growing influence, commercial impact and largely untapped potential.

Here's my conversation with Alisa:

Social media’s influence now extends across discovery, brand preference, demand and reputation, well beyond the role many organisations first built it for. Why does that make it a core commercial skill, and what should change in 2027?

Most of the industry still underestimates it. In our work with hospitality teams across Europe, the Americas and the Middle East, and in the conversations at HoSS, the most common view is that social is a content channel: nice to have, often without a dedicated person managing it.

The way people choose hotels has changed. A younger traveller finds a property through a creator, checks what other guests say and asks an AI assistant to compare it with two alternatives. By the time they reach the booking page, the decision is largely made.

Social shapes that decision, yet hospitality organises it around what it publishes, not the decisions it influences. That is what makes it a commercial skill, and why it belongs in commercial planning from the start.

Are hotels measuring what social media contributes, or what is easiest to count? How can they hold it to commercial outcomes without relying on engagement metrics or overstating what attribution can prove?

Hotels often measure the last visible step of a decision that began much earlier. A guest discovers a property on Instagram, compares it with alternatives, then books after searching for its name. Last-click reporting may credit search; social’s contribution disappears. Crediting the whole booking to social would be equally misleading.

The danger is making budget decisions from an incomplete picture. Reach and engagement are useful diagnostics, not business outcomes. Look at three things together: whether you reach priority guests, signs of preference and intent such as branded search and enquiries, and what happens to direct bookings and acquisition costs over time. No single measure proves causation, but together they support better investment decisions.

Who is responsible when social media creates demand but the business fails to convert it? The journey crosses marketing, digital, revenue, distribution and guest experience. How should that responsibility be shared?

Sometimes the answer is nobody. At HoSS, Santiago García Solimei, former Global Head of Social Media and Brands PR at Meliá Hotels International, shared a case from his time there. Meliá ran more than 500 social accounts across central teams, properties and agencies, and booking enquiries were arriving through social without a unified way to handle them. The group set up a dedicated social care operation, and its published case study reported around 330 booking enquiries a week through its social inbox.

We cannot know how many were missed before. But Meliá recognised that social had become a commercial channel and reorganised to manage it.

A hotel can meet every departmental KPI and still lose the booking. Someone needs accountability for the entire journey, with clear ownership at each handoff.

If every hotel has a beautiful Instagram, what makes one worth twice the price of another? What role should social media play in building perceived value rather than visibility alone?

Remove the logo from much hotel content, and it could belong to a dozen competitors: the same room, the same breakfast, the same sunset. It sells the category, not the property.

That becomes a pricing problem. When guests cannot see a meaningful difference, price becomes the easiest comparison. Social cannot invent value the stay does not deliver, but it can make genuine differences visible: the people, the service, the setting, and the details guests remember.

A simple test: could a competitor publish your content under its own name without anyone noticing? If so, you are giving the guest little reason to pay your rate.

With budgets under pressure, how should leaders choose between more content, paid distribution, technology, measurement and developing their teams? How can they tell whether an investment builds lasting capability or simply more output?

Start with the constraint, not the shopping list. If guests arrive with genuine interest but abandon a difficult booking process, buying more reach could make that weakness more expensive. If conversion works but the right travellers rarely encounter the property, distribution may be the priority.

Sequence matters. Fixing a booking obstacle increases the value of future campaigns; improving measurement changes future budget decisions; developing judgement lets teams get more from tools they already own.

Ask what each investment removes, how you would recognise improvement, and what remains when the campaign ends. More output is not automatically more capability.

As AI makes polished content cheaper and easier to produce, could it make hospitality brands less distinctive? If so, where will competitive advantage on social media come from?

Yes. AI does not create sameness; it makes sameness cheaper to produce. A property with nothing distinctive to say can now say it beautifully, at volume.

As production becomes easier, judgement and genuine brand assets become more valuable: knowing which guests to pursue, what you can credibly promise, and which experiences or perspectives competitors cannot copy. AI can help express a distinctive proposition. It cannot supply one on the hotel’s behalf.

As AI begins to influence which hotels travellers discover and consider, how might it reshape the relationship between social media, search, reputation and brand communication? What does this mean for how hospitality businesses organise and invest in these functions?

The strategic change is who assembles the shortlist. An AI assistant can compare properties before a traveller visits a hotel website. Being absent or inaccurately represented in that answer can mean missing consideration altogether.

This exposes a management problem: websites, listings, search, social, PR and guest reviews are often handled as separate disciplines, though an assistant may combine them. Not every tool uses the same sources, and hotels cannot dictate the answers.

But hotels can keep their own information accurate and fix the recurring weaknesses guests write about. Ask several assistants how they would recommend your hotel to a target traveller. Then ask who in the business is responsible for what you find.

Social media gives hospitality businesses a continuous source of insight into guest expectations, preferences, complaints and emerging behaviours. What becomes possible when that intelligence informs commercial and operational decisions, not just marketing?

Most hotels consider a guest conversation resolved when someone replies. The real question is whether anything changes because of it.

Repeated questions may indicate that the offer, or the information about it, is unclear. A recurring complaint is an operational fix waiting to happen. Unexpected praise is often a selling point marketing has overlooked. They are signals worth investigating, not a survey.

Social teams spot the patterns early; operations, revenue and the GM decide what to do with them. Review the recurring themes together every month, and stop treating a stream of product intelligence as an inbox to clear.

Building Kordie and HoSS around emerging professional capabilities has given you a particular perspective on how hospitality roles are evolving. What new capabilities will hospitality businesses need to develop as social media’s influence on commercial performance continues to expand?

In October, we screened more than 200 publicly listed hospitality social media roles. Our preliminary screening suggests a consistent pattern: commercial goals appear frequently, but explicit responsibility for bookings remains uncommon.

Social media professionals are expected to influence commercial outcomes, yet many lack access to the information, decisions and systems that determine them. Social is one of the clearest examples of the pattern Kordie was founded on: roles changing faster than training and organisations can adapt. HoSS is where we focus on social.

Three capabilities matter most: understanding how guests form preferences, reading social performance in commercial terms, and working across revenue, distribution and operations. Skills belong to people; capabilities belong to organisations. Hire for judgement, train for tools, and stop expecting one role to cover five disciplines.

Has hospitality developed a content production problem, or an attention and relevance problem? Should hotels be questioning the economics of producing more?

Hospitality’s ability to produce content is growing faster than its ability to determine what is worth producing.

Production is becoming cheaper, but attention remains scarce. Publishing twice as much does not make a hotel twice as relevant. Every additional piece of content competes not only with other hotels, but with everything else demanding the traveller’s attention.

This changes the economics of social media. The question is whether another post creates additional value, or simply adds to the volume.

Hotels should stop treating publishing frequency as evidence of progress. Start with the traveller, the decision you want to influence and the reason your content deserves their attention. Sometimes the most effective strategy is to produce less, but make every piece count.

Are international brands confusing global visibility with relevance in their most valuable source markets? How should social investment follow traveller motivations and paths to booking in each market?

A global audience is not the same as global demand. A hotel can attract millions of views internationally and still have little influence in the markets that actually fill its rooms.

The strategic mistake is assuming that a consistent global brand requires a consistent approach to every audience. Brand identity should travel. The reasons guests choose a property, the voices they trust and the information they need often do not.

This has direct implications for investment. A smaller, highly relevant audience in a valuable source market may be worth considerably more than global reach that rarely translates into consideration.

Start with the markets that drive profitable demand, including opportunities to improve demand in weaker periods. Understand how those travellers discover, evaluate and book hotels. Then adapt the content, local voices and booking experience, including language, currency and payment options.

The goal is not global visibility for its own sake. It is influence where that influence has commercial value.

Looking towards 2027, what should a general manager or board challenge before approving a social media strategy and budget, and what should the business stop doing?

A content calendar is not a commercial strategy. Ask which guest decision the investment is meant to influence, what evidence would justify continuing it, and who is accountable when interest fails to convert.

Boards should also distinguish long-term brand preference from immediate demand. Both can justify investment; they require different time horizons and measures. Stop funding one-off influencer stays without a clear purpose, useful rights or any plan to learn from the results.

The competitive advantage will belong less to hotels that publish the most and more to those organised to turn guest attention into lasting preference and commercial value.

My conversation with Alisa reinforced the idea that social media deserves a more prominent place in the strategic discussions taking place at hotel leadership and board level. As we look towards 2027, the challenge is not simply to produce better content, embrace AI or attract more followers, but to develop a clearer understanding of how social media influences brand perception, guest engagement and ultimately commercial performance. Perhaps the most important takeaway is that this conversation needs to extend well beyond the marketing department, bringing general managers, owners and other key stakeholders into a discussion about the true impact and potential of social media in hospitality.