Service scans Twitter to help hotels find new guests

Reach.ly monitors Twitter for mentions of planned trips and allows hotels to reach out to visitors who are heading their way.

Hotels can already turn to Revinate for help with social media in general, but Reach.ly is a new service focused specifically on finding potential new guests. Toward that end, Reach.ly monitors Twitter for mentions of planned trips and allows hotels to reach out to visitors who are heading their way. Reach.ly’s free service begins when hotels register with the site via Twitter and indicate which cities they’re interested in. Using a complex set of algorithms, Reach.ly then begins to filter Twitter traffic for them, and it uses a hotel-specific dashboard to present a neatly packaged and manageable number of tweets from consumers who express an interest in traveling to a relevant city. Hotels can then communicate with those potential guests through the Reach.ly interface, whether by sending a greeting, offering some advice about the city or extending a targeted offer. A full 9 percent of guests receiving a message through Reach.ly end up making a booking, according to Latvian SIA Eklinda, which operates the site. About 20 percent more respond that they appreciate the direct communication, the company says. At least as compelling, of course, is the fact that bookings made this way avoid any agency fees. Hotels around the globe: one to try out? Spotted by: Katherine Noyes