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Meliá Exceeds 6.7 Million Followers and Strengthens its Relationship with Hootsuite as its Partner for Social Media Management

Aspire Executive Lounges, Swissport's global airport hospitality brand, has joined the British Institute of Hospitality, the world’s leading and award-winning membership body for hospitality professionals. Aspire Executive Lounges becomes the first business partner from the airport lounge hospitality sector to join the Institute of Hospitality. Aspire Executive Lounges, the fast-growing Swiss brand in the airport hospitality business, has joined the British Institute of Hospitality (IoH), the world’s leading membership body for professionals working and studying in the hospitality leisure and tourism industry. Aspire Executive Lounges is the first business from the airport lounge sector to become a member of IoH. The collaboration will foster an exchange of expertise and insights: IoH will benefit from Aspire's expertise in airport hospitality, while Aspire, by sharing its wealth of experience with IoH members, can extend its professional network to the hotel and catering sectors and hospitality management schools. “Our vision for Aspire Executive Lounges is clear and simple: We want to deliver a guest experience that is similar to what our guests are used to from their preferred hotels, meeting the needs and exceeding the expectations of today’s travelers,” says David Collyer, Global Vice President of Executive Lounges at Swissport International AG. “We strive to deliver an unparalleled experience and set a benchmark that transcends our industry, redefining excellence across the hospitality sector. The Institute of Hospitality is a great network to exchange insights and experiences, and to learn from others in the hospitality sector, which will help us bring our vision to life.” Robert Richardson, CEO of the Institute of Hospitality: “Our aspiration at the Institute of Hospitality has been to develop and grow our membership, the number of countries we operate in, and the number of hospitality sectors represented within our organization. With that in mind, it is a natural partnership for us to welcome Aspire into our family, and to learn from their teams, who serve travelers with passion and dedication. As two organizations with similar values, we look forward to collaborating in promoting high levels of excellence within our profession.” With over 30 years of experience, Aspire Executive Lounges is Europe’s largest brand in the airport lounges sector. In 2023, Swissport welcomed more than five million customers worldwide at over 69 lounges in 20 countries. The airport hospitality brand recently opened new lounges at Toronto City Airport in Canada, and Helsinki-Vantaa Airport in Finland. Aspire Executive Lounges recently created a new lounge concept in partnership with the airline alliance oneworld. The first oneworld branded lounge was launched at Incheon Airport in Seoul, Korea, in December 2023. Aspire Executive Lounges is owned by Swissport International AG, the global leader in aviation services, serving airlines at 286 airports in 44 countries across 6 continents
Written by Amy
  • Listed in the top 10 companies of the IBEX 35, Melia is the third-largest hotel group in Europe with 380 hotels across 43 countries.
  • The number of followers across social channels has increased by 28.4% in just 12 months.
  • 12% of their website traffic in 2018 came directly from social networks.

Meliá Hotels International has cemented itself as the most influential hotel network in Spain, with 380 hotels globally and 480 social networks (165 hotels and 15 brands with their own presence). It recently exceeded 6.7 million followers across all channels, representing an increase of 28.4% over 12 months. Much of this has been possible thanks to a recent digital transformation project where it promoted a social media culture and reorganised its social networks in collaboration with Hootsuite.

Social media has become a key pillar of Meliá’s digital transformation which covers multiple objectives:

  • To improve customer relationships by offering a personalised experience
  • Increase brand recognition
  • Increase traffic to com
  • Empower employees through a social culture and attract new talent

With these objectives in place, Meliá launched a project to reorganise its social network structure with the implementation of Hootsuite Enterprise. A platform that, from a single panel, allows the company’s social team to amalgamate and visualise Meliá’s entire network of social channels, being able to quickly and easily see all generated content across all hotels and geographies.

The project focused on the content created by its brands and hotels, humanising the messages distributed through corporate channels and focusing on the people behind the brand:

  • Clients: Melia wants to take advantage of the authenticity and credibility the consumer voice gives to a brand or product. For this reason, it has implemented a user-generated content management system (Flowics), to be used in its different email marketing, digital marketing or via widgets on its website, enabling users to make reservations with just one click from content created by users.
  • Influencers: content generated by influencers has allowed new voices to be incorporated into brand content, achieving greater relevance and authenticity for more specific audiences. The programme is managed through software for identification, analysis and reporting of all activity (Traackr) and has recently been linked to 1.74 million interactions based on 40 activations with influencers exclusively for the ME By Meliá brand, a potential reach of 74.7 million users.
  • The “Social” CEO: Gabriel Escarrer, Chief Executive Officer of Melia, activated his personal profiles on Twitter and LinkedIn in 2018 to support the company’s new social media culture and promote the reputation of the corporate brand. In addition, it encouraged interaction with Melia’s customers through the hashtag #AskCEOMelia, where fans could ask him questions about aspects of the tourism industry directly.
  • Employees: Meliá has also launched a new programme of internal ambassadors utilising Hootsuite Amplify, which allows the company’s employees to access pre-approved content which they can share and customise for their own social channels, helping to humanise the brand. As a result, Meliá generated 142 million impressions in 2018 alone.

All these actions have translated into an increase in global visits to the melia.com sales website from social networks, which has risen from 9% in 2017 to 12% in 2018 (in Europe, the percentage rose to 16%).

“The influence of social networks when it comes to the reputation and performance of the business is now unquestionable. Being active in this environment has given us the opportunity to gain a bigger social footprint and better understand our business, our clients and all our stakeholders. We’re strengthening our relationships with them in an authentic and transparent way,” says Gabriel Escarrer, CEO of Meliá.

Since this programme, Hootsuite has become a valued partner of Meliá enabling it to promote its social strategy on a large scale. As explained by Santiago Garcia Solimei, Global Director of Social Media at Meliá: “Hootsuite has become a strategic partner of Social Media for us and is the basis of our entire social strategy on this large scale. It has become a 360 solution that facilitates the management of all our networks, both global marketing teams, as well as the operational managers of the hotel itself.”

About Hootsuite

Hootsuite is the most used social media management platform, trusted by more than 16 million customers and more than 80 percent of Fortune 1000 companies. Hootsuite’s unparalleled experience, customer knowledge at scale and the collaboration ecosystem empower large and small organizations to strategically grow their brand, their business and their relationships with society. For more information, visit www.hootsuite.com.

About the author

Amy