San Antonio’s Indigo Hotel recently got some viral traction after its concierge staff chose to play along with a guest’s strange requests. See the details here.
This sort of things actually seems to be an emerging fad, with customers taking advantage of special request sections of online forms to ask for strange indulgences from hotels, takeout restaurants, and others. Presumably, customers attempt this kind of playfulness far more often than the employees or proprietors choose to go along with it.
Although ignoring this kind of thing probably won’t result in the customer leaving with a negative impression of the business, doing so wastes a good social media marketing opportunity, in more ways than one.
As the Indigo Hotel example illustrates, this kind of thing creates a personal connection with the customer and makes them considerably more likely to remember their experience and promote it to their friends and to a general audience on social media and the internet. As of this writing, the top comment on the above imgur post says, “I hope you tipped the f*** out of them and went online to every travel site and rated them the highest you could.”
Indeed, the Indigo Hotel staff didn’t waste the opportunity to turn their comical conversation with their guest toward a request for a rating on TripAdvisor.
If your business is a hotel, restaurant, or anything else that relies on direct interaction with the public, your local social media company can do a lot of the day to day work of keeping customers engaged with your marketing. But don’t forget to get that same social media company involved when unique little opportunities like this present themselves. Handle it well, and you could hit social media paydirt.