A&O focuses on Influencers and Social Media Marketing

As part of the realignment of the brand, A&O is planning to allocate some of its budget for video clips and opinion-makers on YouTube, Instagram and with niche blogging for the very first time.

Facebook remains the strongest online communication channel and gets its own brand representatives for each of the A&O Hotels, who combine new hotel features with fast customer support.

Strategic influencer campaigns
The company has allocated a fixed portion of its annual budget for influencers, who will produce YouTube clips, Instagram posts or blog entries at least six times a year.

'The classic advertising media such as TV and print often do not reach our target groups sufficiently. This is why we shall also be using influencers in the future to spread our brand messages. We will focus on authentic and independent disseminators. This means that we are going for mid-sized niche vloggers and bloggers with a high follower commitment, rather than bigger players who are advertising a new product every 2 minutes,' emphasises Phillip Winter, CMO of the A&O Hotel Group.

The schoolgirl Ema Louise (Germany) and students ViktoriaSarina (Austria) have already started two very successful YouTube test runs in 2016 with their lifestyle & beauty channels.

Social media insiders covering all 31 A&Os
A&O has an English-language global page and a German, Polish and Italian main channel. There are also Facebook pages for each of the current 31 establishments. A&O holds an extra training course for the social insiders in each of the hotels for a more direct and faster handling of guest requests and hotel news.

The basics of the written word in customer relations and the unified corporate philosophy are just some of the topics covered. Previously, guest inquiries, competitions and the dissemination of product innovations were handled centrally for all 35 of the Facebook pages via the headquarters in Berlin.

Winter adds: 'The benefit to the guest is huge: it starts with easier handling of lost and found queries to happy hour posts, through to traffic updates. The intermediate stage of going through Berlin is no longer necessary – the guest speaks directly with the hotel staff.'

Interested readers can find more information at
https://www.facebook.com/aohostels/
https://www.instagram.com/aohostels/
https://www.youtube.com/user/aohostels